Jing and the Dark Lady
by omasuoniwabanshi
Summary: Jing finds himself drawn into helping out a land ruled by a mysterious woman whose iron fisted laws keep her people living in terror. Will good triumph over evil, or is it really that simple? Read on and find out! You don't need to have seen all of the
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Jing King of Bandits

**A/N:** There are no major plot spoilers in this story, and if you've never seen Jing King of Bandits, all you need to know is that Jing is a master thief and goes around having adventures in a fantastical land with his sidekick, Kir, a talking bird.

To those of you who are familiar with the series, I've only seen the first several dvds of the anime series, so I apologize in advance if the names I've used for my OC s are already taken. There are only so many alcoholic beverage names to choose from!

CHAPTER ONE: PROLOGUE:

"Hey Jing, what about here?"

Kir was tired of flapping. Alighting on a rocky outcropping, he gestured with his wing at the rough semicircle of boulders.

"Sure, Kir. We'll stop here for the night," Jing agreed amiably. He set to work finding firewood. Kir flapped down from his rock and began hopping around, collecting twigs to use as kindling.

"Not that I wouldn't rather be in a nice cushy inn like last night, you know. Did you see the physique on that chambermaid?" Kir's words came out muffled by the wood in his mouth. "I think she liked me!"

"She smacked you in the beak with a towel, Kir," Jing smiled over his load of firewood.

"Mmr wr um wrv rap."

"Huh?"

"Ptooie." Kir spat his twigs out in the middle of a small circle of stones in the center of the clearing. Evidently the area had been used before as a campground. "I said, 'that was a love tap'! Trust me, that girl couldn't keep away from me!"

With that the diminutive bird sat down on the ground, only to shoot up again a second later. "Yowtch!"

"What is it?" Jing asked curiously, ambling over and dumping his wood into the ring, coming to a stop by the crow who was rubbing his posterior with an aggrieved look on his face.

"I sat on something sharp."

Jing squatted and pulled something out of the dirt, holding it up for Kir to see. "It's an arrowhead," he told him. "Look, they're all around."

Kir glanced about and saw them, sticking out of the earth at intervals like sharks' teeth. "Hey, how'd they get here?"

Brushing dirt off the arrowhead in his palm with his thumb, Jing gazed at it as he spoke. "There was a battle around here about fifteen years or so ago. We're right on the edge of Zenithria. Fifteen years ago members of the former royal family took back their capitol city from the Absolut family who'd taken it from them a decade before. These arrows must be left over from that time."

"Yawn." Kir commented stridently. "Ancient history is boring. All those dates and battles…"

"Not this battle," Jing flicked his companion a glance. "It's said that the woman who took back the throne was a 'Creature Caller'."

"A Creature Caller?" Kir's eyes narrowed as he searched his memory. "What's that?"

Jing tossed the arrowhead away. "A Creature Caller, sometimes also known as a Creature Creator, is a woman from the royal line who can create fantastical animals, monsters even, and control them. They say that the war was won by such creatures. Since then Zenithria closed itself off. It discourages visitors and keeps to itself."

"A woman, huh? Is she pretty?"

Jing stifled a smile. Kir had a one-track mind when it came to women. "No one knows. Once victory was assured the Dark Lady shut herself up in the royal palace's tower and let her monsters run the kingdom. She doesn't come out much. Her monsters enforce the laws. At least that's what I heard."

Kir cocked his head and squinted. "Speaking of hearing, do you hear that?"

"What?" Jing's grey eyes took on a watchful aspect. Kir might be a lecher, but his senses were sharp, and Jing had come to depend on them.

The bird stuck his head out and leaned to the right, cupping a wing around his ear. "I hear someone crying. Sounds female. Yipee! Another damsel in distress to be rescued! I can't wait to be showered with kisses of gratitude!" And with that, Kir took off flying through the trees.

Sighing, Jing rose to his feet and followed, running lightly behind the girl-obsessed bird. Life with Kir was always eventful. Together they followed the sound of sobbing.

o-o-o

SAME CLEARING, 15 YEARS PREVIOUSLY

An old woman, dressed in traveling robes, her grey hair falling wild down her back, moved silently through the trees, skirting the campsite where the mercenary troops gathered around the campfire cooking their nightly stew. They were a nuisance, but necessary, at least until Mirin got serious about the war and made some more obedient warriors. That girl had potential. She was the strongest Creature Caller ever born to the family.

Absinthe once again cursed her nephew for taking the girl from the family. Well, Absinthe got the girl back and at long last she'd take back what was rightfully hers – the Zenithrian throne.

Now someone else threatened to take what was hers, and she wasn't about to stand for it. Moving carefully through the trees she kept out of sight of the sentries, and kept well away from the command tents she'd set up a week ago as she gathered troops on both sides of Zenithria, preparing her pincer movement. The Absolut family wouldn't know what hit them. She'd heard they were frantically trying to hire mercenaries as well, but Absinthe had already snapped up the best in three kingdoms. She allowed a grin to steal over her features, accentuating the wrinkles in her face and allowed her feral nature to show, in a way she couldn't afford to do around Mirin.

Mirin was a foolish girl, and Absinthe was about to find out the extent of her folly.

There up ahead was the half ruined woodsman's cottage where Cervasa, the youngest of her mercenary captains, had set up camp. His men were scattered around, but not too close to the cottage. Absinthe figured as much. He wouldn't want them around to witness his wooing of her grand-niece. The man had been sniffing around Mirin for weeks now. Absinthe knew he'd make his move when he thought she'd gone to inspect the troops at the other end of the kingdom. He'd underestimated her.

Light spilled from a window at the back of the cottage. Absinthe drew closer, like a moth to a flame, and settled by the window, screened by a bush. Through its leafy branches she had the perfect view of the cottage interior and could hear and see everything.

Inside the cottage Mirin, her grand-niece, stood by Cervasa. The girl's hands were clasped in his. A bench and table stood in the center of the room, a knife, fork and the crumbled remains of cheese and bread on the single plate all that remained of the young mercenary's dinner. The candlelight from a rough iron candelabra on the table next to them caught the light in Mirin's warm brown eyes and lifted shimmers from her long dark hair. Absinthe had once had hair like that, and a sharp envy for the girl coursed through her.

"I can't leave her," Mirin said softly, clutching Cervasa's hands. "Not now that our army is finally ready…Absinthe has been planning this for so long. In just a couple of days our forces will be ready to attack."

"Don't you mean YOUR forces?" Cervasa asked. He was a young man, with chestnut colored hair. He had a stocky build and sported a well-trimmed beard and moustache. Absinthe smirked. To a foolish young girl like Mirin, Absinthe supposed he looked dashing. Absinthe however, saw him for what he was, a mercenary on the make. He thought to steal her niece away, to get her to make monsters for him so he could become the most powerful mercenary around. She narrowed her eyes and listened as Cervasa continued.

"You're the one who can create those creatures, not her. She's using you, Mirin. You have no idea what war is actually like. Believe me, you don't want any part of it."

Mirin leaned forward over their linked hands, her body language beseeching. "Try to understand, Cervasa. She needs me. How can we defeat the forces of chaos if I'm not here to help her take the city? It's my destiny. I have to do this."

Cervasa leaned forward too, so that their faces were only inches apart. His voice grew more urgent as he went on. "You only think it's your destiny, Mirin. And why? Because Absinthe told you so since you were a little girl. Can't you see that she's using you for her own purposes? She's filled your head full of talk of 'destiny' We have to leave, now, while she's off checking the troops on the far side of the city."

Mirin pulled her hands out of his and stepped back. Absinthe could see the disappointment in his eyes as he released his grip and let go.

"You're wrong," Mirin said, shaking her head slowly. "She's not using me, she's helping me to fulfill my destiny. Without me, chaos will prevail in Zenithria. I was born to bring order to my kingdom, and Absinthe is helping me to do it. Crime has doubled under the Absolut family. The people are in danger!"

She'd come out without her usual hair tie to keep her locks in check, and one of them fell forward. She raised a hand to push it back over her shoulder absently as she continued.

"You know that after my parents died, my brother and his wife raised me. They had a little boy, my nephew. I lived with them. I didn't know that father once lived in the palace, or that I was of royal birth. I was happy there, but my life was ordinary. Then Absinthe came. She told my brother Sake and I that we were royal. She told me that I was special, that I was the last in a long line of Creature Callers, the first in generations to bear the birthmark so strongly."

Mirin's hand stole to the back of her neck, where Absinthe knew the cross shaped mark was embedded in her skin. It was the only color on her otherwise perfect alabaster complexion.

"My parents fled the palace when they saw the mark. They wanted me to escape my destiny, my duty, and because of that they died."

"I thought you said they died of influenza." Cervasa interjected dryly.

Absinthe narrowed her eyes at his flippant attitude. Making fun of the story she'd carefully inculcated in Mirin's mind wouldn't win him any points.

Her grand-niece frowned. "It was fate's way of punishing them for taking me away from the palace."

"Darling, if you'd been in the palace when the Absolut family came storming in, you'd have been killed with everyone else. Your father was wise to take you, your mother, and brother away when he did."

Stubbornly, Mirin shook her head. "Maybe at first, but he didn't return me to Absinth, he never tried to find the rest of the family and take back what was ours. He had a duty, I have a duty, and I will not forsake mine. I belong in that palace. Absinthe said so. The longer it takes me to get there, the more innocent people will die."

"What do you mean?" Cervasa asked incredulously.

Mirin stepped over to the table and began pressing her fingers against it. It was something she did when she was upset. Absinthe grinned. Cervasa was forcing her to explain herself, to remember the worst time in her life. He was indeed a fool, because Mirin would end up resenting him for making her relive that pain.

"Great-Aunt Absinthe and I are the only ones left of our family now. When she came to us to beg my brother to let me go with her, so she could train me in the ways of creature calling, he refused. She left and the next week when I came home from school I found them dead. My brother, his wife, even Sake Jr., all of them were dead. All my sister in law's jewelry was missing. A thief must have killed them. There was so much blood. The villagers sent word to my aunt and she came and got me. If I'd just gone with her the first time she came, my brother and his family might still be alive. It was fate's way of showing me how badly I was needed to restore peace and order to the land."

Mirin stepped back from the table, sadness in her eyes as she looked Cervasa. "You can't ignore destiny. I have to prevent anything like that from happening ever again. My destiny is a sacred duty, and I can't ignore it. Every time my family tried to ignore it they died, don't you see?"

Cervasa gestured sharply. "All you know is what Absinthe told you. What if she's…wrong?"

"She can't be wrong. My parents are dead, my brother and his family are dead. How can that be a coincidence? It's fate trying to set things right."

"Maybe it's not coincidence. Did you ever think of that?" Cervasa and Mirin stood like statues, his words creating a leaden silence between them. Absinthe held her breath. This was bad, very bad. Then Mirin grimaced, breaking the spell.

"What do you mean?" Genuine puzzlement spread across her face. Absinthe let her breath out. Her training held. Mirin found it impossible to doubt her.

Cervasa seemed to realize it too. He started to speak, stopped, shook his head gently and stepped forward to cup her face in his hands.

"Do you love me, Mirin?"

"You know I do," she whispered back to him.

"Then come away with me. Come away and test this 'destiny' theory of yours. I may just be a mercenary your aunt hired, but I love you, and I swear I'll protect you. If nothing happens then you'll know you _can_ escape this destiny of yours."

"But Absinthe plans to storm the palace in three days' time. She can't make it to the top of the tower without my help, and you know what the prophecy says, 'He who reaches the last level of the tower will destroy the old rule and lead all Zenithria'."

"If she wants Zenithria back so badly, let her fight for it herself."

"But she needs me." Absinthe heard the wavering in Mirin's voice and cursed silently.

"You've created enough monsters for her to use. Why not let her have them? I'll protect you, Mirin. Leave the monsters with her and come away with me. You have to decide now. Do you want to live with her in that tower or do you want to live with me?"

They stared at each other. Absinthe ground her teeth together. She recognized that look.

"With you," Mirin said at last. "I want to be with you."

Cervasa smiled in relief. "Then let's go."

Mirin nodded firmly. "Let me go get my cloak from my tent."

"I'll buy you a new one."

Mirin took a step back, smiling gently. "It's got my diary in its pocket. I'll be right back," she promised, and slipped out the door.

Absinthe gave her a few minutes, then stole around to the front of the cottage, her brow furrowed in intense concentration.

"What the…?"

Rounding the corner and passing in through the doorway, Absinthe surveyed a most satisfying sight. Cervasa was restrained, his arms and legs clasped in the iron grip of four Absinthes. Another Absinthe, a mirror image of the original, held a knife to his throat.

It taxed Absinthe's abilities to their limit to be able to create five more copies of herself, and copies were all that she could do, and only of herself. For the millionth time she cursed her inability to do more with the watered down version of the family gift she'd been given.

She felt a bead of sweat run down the side of her face. Unlike Mirin, who could create vast numbers of creatures and maintain them without effort, it took a lot out of Absinthe to make even a few copies of herself. She'd have to make this quick, especially since she was already maintaining a copy at the other side of the city to give herself an alibi. No one knew of Absinthe's ability, not even Mirin. Her pride would not allow her to be compared to her infinitely more gifted niece.

"Did you really think I'd let the last Creature Creator from my family fall into your hands, Cervasa?" she sneered.

"Not the last one, obviously." Cervasa pulled against the women gripping his arms, stopping only when his motion caused the knife at his throat to score a thin red line that beaded up and began to bleed.

Absinthe shrugged. "I do copies only. Mirin is the strongest of us all. Only she can create literally anything she can dream up."

"Her dreams are nightmares because of you! She's created hideous beasts from legends to serve your twisted ambitions. Legends you told her! You don't care about her, you only want your throne back!"

How impassioned the young were. Absinthe stared coldly into the eyes of the young man who stood in the way of her dreams of power. "Perhaps, but you won't be around to see it. Your death will simply prove to Mirin once again the folly of avoiding her destiny. This tragedy will bind her even closer to me, and she'll never suspect that I had anything to do with it since I, or rather an image of myself, am out with the troops right now. You should have stayed away from my niece, Cervasa. From now on I'll have to depend on monsters. Humans are so unreliable."

"What do you know of humans? You're the real monster here!" Cervasa snarled. "Don't think I don't know you killed Mirin's brother to get her away from him. What do you intend to do with her once you've got your way? Kill her too?"

Absinthe laughed. "Kill her? Certainly not, she's far too useful. But that doesn't mean I'll be sharing the throne with her. There's a lovely little basement in the palace. She can live there, writing her silly little laws, and keeping my army of creatures under control. You, however, are of no use to me whatsoever. Goodbye, Cervasa."

Had anyone been near the cottage, they would have heard a choked cry turn into a watery gurgle, then silence. They would have seen the bent figure of an old woman peer around the doorway, then escape into the shadows.

A few moments later, they would have seen a young girl, about seventeen, with coal black hair and fair skin, rushing quietly up to the cottage. They would have seen her enter, heard her scream out Cervasa's name, then heard the heartbroken sobs emanating from the building, but no one was close enough to hear, and Mirin cried throughout the night until discovery came with the dawn of the next day.

TO BE CONTINUED…


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Disclaimer: I don't own Jing King of Bandits

The sound of crying grew louder as Kir and Jing approached. Through the trees they could see a girl in a blue dress hunched over a rock, crying her heart out.

As they came closer they saw a mass of curly blonde hair quivering with the force of her sobs. She was a tiny thing, with her legs curled under her and her head resting on her arms.

Jing moved closer. "Hey there. What's wrong?"

The girl gasped and lifted her head off her arms, scooting backwards on her rear end.

"Aw crap, she's just a kid," huffed Kir in disappointment.

The child turned a surprised, tearstained face towards the bird, who had the grace to blush and hop backwards on the ground.

Ignoring him, Jing knelt by the little girl, who looked about eight years old.

"We aren't going to hurt you," he told her gently. "What are you doing out here in the forest?"

She sniffed and used the back of her hand to wipe her nose. Big blue eyes met Jing's calm grey ones. Seeing nothing but kindness there, the girl gulped and began to speak.

"I ran away," she told him.

"OK…"

"I ran away from Pilsner. I don't want to leave Zenithria!"

Kir rolled his eyes. "Because living in a land filled with arrowheads is such a picnic, I suppose."

The little girl's eyes filled with tears and her lip trembled.

"What's your name?" Jing asked, distracting her from Kir's sarcasm.

"Campari."

"And who's Pilsner?"

"I'm Pilsner."

Jing turned his body slightly to face a boy about seventeen years old, standing among the trees at the edge of the clearing and holding an arrow notched to a bow.

Kir squawked and flapped, gaining altitude. The boy ignored him and kept his arrow trained on Jing's chest.

"Well, well," said Jing. "I wondered when you were going to come out of there."

The boy, brown haired and brown eyed, dressed in a plain white shirt and ragged black jeans, took a step forward out of the tree line.

"Come away from him, Campari."

"But I don't want…" objected the girl.

"Do it!" shouted the boy. Campari jumped at his harsh tone.

"I don't think the lady wants to go with you," said Jing in a calm voice, twitching a finger at his side to signal his comrade.

Kir, having gained the tree tops, now folded his wings at his sides and swooped down, clipping the back of Pilsner's head with his talons. The boy stumbled forward, his grip on his bow shaken. As he tried to recover himself, he found his hands empty.

Jing stepped back to face him, holding the bow and arrow, which he'd grabbed out of Pilsner's grip. Pilsner lurched upright and reached for it, but Jing held it up over his head, with the arrow's shaft parallel against the bow.

"Finder's keepers, I always say," laughed the King of Bandits.

Pilsner fell to his knees. "Please, don't hurt her," he begged. "She's been through enough."

Campari got to her feet and ran over to the boy, sinking down beside him. "I'm sorry, Pilsner, this is all my fault."

The boy put his arm around her shoulders absently and stared up at Jing, his eyes both angry and beseeching at the same time.

"There's no need for such drama," Jing told him, lowering the weapon and letting it fall harmlessly to the grass. "I just want to know why you're dragging this girl away from her home."

"Home!" snorted the boy. "What home? Campari's brother, Glenlivit, was sent to the mines for being out past curfew. I promised him I'd take care of her if anything happened to him. Nadiria might not be the greatest kingdom in the world, but it's better than Zenithria. At least they don't have monsters roaming the streets."

Kir landed in the grass next to the fallen bow and arrow. "Monsters? Now I've heard everything. You've been reading too many fairy tales, kid. There are no such thing as monsters."

Pilsner frowned at the bird. "You don't know what you're talking about. A Cerberus dog caught Campari's brother. Cyclopses guard our borders, and trolls and ogres are our police force."

"Yeah right," said Kir stridently. "Next I suppose you'll tell me that dog running through the forest is actually a werewolf!"

"Dog?" Pilsner turned pale and tightened his grip on Campari's shoulders.

At that moment the trees at the end of the clearing were thrust back violently. A massive dog, twice as large as a draft horse, with three snarling heads covered by fur as black as night and as thick as a bear's pelt, stood between the snapped tree trunks.

The center head swiveled and spoke. "Where is the kidnapper?"

Campari shrieked and buried her head in Pilsner's shoulder.

The center head bared its teeth as the other heads kept up a constant snarling accompaniment. "Surrender and hand over the girl."

Jing sauntered into the center of the clearing, breaking the dog's line of sight to Pilsner and Campari.

"I'm afraid I can't do that," he said. "Between the two of you, I think Campari is better off with Pilsner. She doesn't seem to like you much."

Jing kept walking, edging to the left, noticing that the monster's three heads swiveled to track his movements, obviously reckoning him the greatest threat.

Kir took flight from the ground, landing on Jing's shoulder and began taunting the creature.

"Yah, you're ugly and you've got triple dog breath. What woman would ever want to go with you? Now a bird like me, on the other hand…"

With a roar, the dog charged, but Jing and Kir were already on the move.

"Give me a Kir Royale!" shouted Jing.

Kir was on his arm in a second, merging and extending, opening his mouth to let out a blast of green energy that hit the dog dead center.

The monster stopped mid-leap, his roar cut off as his body dissolved into dust particles which showered to the ground.

Jing blinked once to show his surprise as Kir disentangled himself.

"Well, that was easy," the bird commented, brushing off his feathers and preening.

Pilsner stared open mouthed. "How did you do that?"

Jing only grinned in response and walked toward them, kneeling by the little girl who peeked up at him through the curtain of her curly bangs.

"Please, you're so strong. Can't you save my brother?" she asked shyly.

Jing was silent a moment, then he smiled. "Sure. Sure I'll save your brother."

Kir groaned.

"Stop it!" Pilsner snarled. Standing, he pulled Campari to her feet, then covered her ears with his hands so she couldn't hear. "Don't make promises you can't keep. Glenlivit is probably already dead by now. No one ever returns from the mines, not ever." With another glare, he dropped his hands from the child's ears.

"Well then, maybe it's about time someone did," grinned Jing as he got to his feet and began to walk away.

"Don't worry, kid," Kir said, strutting confidently in front of the boy and girl. "Jing's a master thief. He could steal the stars from the sky. Stealing some kid from a mine will be a piece of cake."

Campari gasped and clung to Pilsner who stared incredulously for a minute then shouted, "You're crazy if you think you, a thief, can survive in Zenithria. My cousin got sent to the mines just for taking a few pencils home from work. You break any of the rules, and you're gone to the mines before you can blink!

Jing stopped, and looked over his shoulder. "What better way to get to where I want to be?" he asked, and kept going.

"Hey Jing, wait up!" Kir screeched and flew after him.

o-o-o

The capitol city of Zenithria was a quaint sprawl of old fashioned architecture leading up to a central hill where the palace, its many storied circular tower clearly visible from every corner of the town, sat entrenched behind crenellated stone walls.

It was late afternoon, and the streets were beginning to fill with people hurrying home from work, or hurrying to the modern equivalent of the watering hole, the local tavern.

Jing found one that wasn't too busy, down a side street near the palace. A few old timers sat nursing beers at the back of the room while a tall, burly barkeep kept an eye on two teenaged boys carrying a barrel in from the rear area behind the bar.

They set the barrel down on the counter behind the bar and stepped back as the barkeep tapped it, setting a spigot into the flat round top of the barrel.

"Ack! Jing, I think I'm seeing double!" squawked Kir from his perch on Jing's shoulder as he stared at the boys behind the bar. Both had unruly red hair, freckles, and were broad-shouldered, just like the barkeep. They even wore matching green shirts and grey pants.

"They're twins, Kir." Jing explained, keeping his eye on the barkeep who turned from the barrel to cross his arms and stare at the King of Bandits. Jing cocked his head to the side a little and stared back. "They belong to you, I think?"

The barkeep was a large man, dressed in a black vest, white shirt, and dark pants belted around a waist thick with muscle, not fat. Like the boys, he too had red hair, but it was flecked with grey and thinner across the top.

"I'm Grappa, and that's Porter and Claret. They're my sons." He glanced over at them, and raised his voice a bit in admonition. "Back to work now, our evening rush is about to begin."

The barkeep motioned to the boys to leave, and they did, disappearing through the back door behind the bar.

"Now what can I do for you?" he asked, crossing his arms unwelcomingly. "We don't serve under aged drinkers here."

"That's alright, I'm not thirsty," Jing reassured him. "Just answer me this: What does a guy have to do to get arrested around here?"

The bartender raised his eyebrows nearly up to his hairline before he answered. "Stranger, you don't want to get arrested around here. There's just one sentence for everything according to the Dark Lady's laws, and that's a life sentence in the diamond mines."

"Dark Lady?" squawked Kir.

"Diamond mines?" repeated Jing.

The barkeep's gaze flicked between the boy and the bird before settling on Jing. "Yeah, black diamonds. It's what Zenithria's known for. They use some for jewelry, but they're mostly good for industrial use, drill bits, stuff like that."

"It just so happens I'm interested in diamonds."

"Enough to die for them?" asked the barkeep sharply. "No one has ever returned from those mines alive."

"Anyone ever return dead?" quipped Kir, then recoiled slightly as the barkeep glared at him.

"No. Not even the bodies are returned. Letters come back unopened, and anyone who's tried to trespass…let's just say no one has ever come back from that either."

"This Dark Lady you mentioned, who is she?" asked Jing, changing the subject.

"Yeah, is she hot?" Kir raised his eyebrows suggestively.

The barkeep frowned. "Who knows? Fifteen years ago two women from the previous royal family fought and killed off the Absolut family and took back the throne. The Dark Lady sits on it now, and no one has seen the other woman for years."

"But is she a babe, this Dark Lady?"

Jing stifled his exasperation at Kir's one-track mind as the Barkeep answered the bird's question.

"Could be for all we know. No one sees her, except when she walks along the top of the tower sometimes, and she wears a long veil. She doesn't come out of the palace, she's got her monsters to do her bidding."

"Sounds like a lonely life," commented Jing lightly.

"I wouldn't feel sorry for her if I were you," the barkeep told him. "She rules with an iron fist. There are laws for everything, including a curfew. Now if you'll excuse me, I've only got another hour or two to serve my paying customers before they have to be home before it."

With that, the barkeep stooped over and began hauling empty beer mugs out from a shelf under the bar.

Taking the hint, Jing and Kir moved to a table in the back corner and sat down. The barkeep ignored them, but eventually one of the two redheaded twins came out with a plain white apron around his waist and an ordering pad in his hand and made his way around the tables.

"So, are you Porter or Claret?" asked Kir, hopping on the table.

"Porter," answered the boy with a longsuffering grin. "Now what can I get for you two? We've got rabbit stew or beef pie."

"Ooh, rabbit stew!" Kir sighed. "I haven't had a good rabbit stew in ages."

"Two rabbit stews," Jing told their waiter, then leaned forward on his elbows on the table. "Now what can you tell me about the diamond mines?"

A shadow passed over the boy's face, and his expression darkened. "I can tell you this," he said, "I've lost too many friends to that place."

With that he nodded a goodbye and went to the next table.

For the next hour and a half Jing and Kir ate their rabbit stew and people-watched.

The customers who came in to the tavern were mostly men who appeared to be single, coming in for a hot meal and a beer, or the hard drinkers who sat at the bar and drank their liquor out of small shot glasses with the quick practiced movements of people on the clock.

At the end of the first hour, the customers began to glance nervously at their watches and leave. By an hour and a half, the last of the hard drinkers slipped off his stool and tottered out the door. In the corner, in the shadows, Jing and Kir sat unnoticed as the barkeep sent his sons to the back with the dirty dishes and set about cleaning up the bar area.

Halfway through he glanced up, saw the pair, and froze. He looked outside through the window at the darkening sky. "What are you doing? You've got to get out of here. It's almost curfew."

Jing got to his feet and smiled. "I know," he said, and headed for the door, Kir flying to perch on his shoulder.

The barkeep extended a hand. "Wait. You can stay here tonight."

Kir glanced back and grinned, "First it's 'go', now it's 'stay' – you have trouble making up your mind, don't you?"

"But…"

"Don't worry," Jing turned his head as he reached the door. "I'll be fine," he told Grappa, and left.

o-o-o

The streets were deserted. Lights shone in some of the apartment windows, but the shops and street level businesses, apart from a few restaurants and bars still cleaning up, were dark.

"Sheesh, this place rolls up the sidewalks and puts up a 'closed' sign at dusk, doesn't it?" Kir commented in disgust. "It sure is dead around here."

"Oh, I have a feeling it'll liven up pretty quickly," Jing told him. They came to the end of the street where an octagonal fountain stood in the middle of the intersection, its waters flowing from a central, fish shaped spout. Jing's head swiveled as he glanced over to the three other streets that emptied into the intersection.

Kir squinted, then started as the guttural sound of growling reached them. It was coming from two of the three streets. "This can't be good." He gathered himself to fly.

"No, stay with me," Jing told him, and took off at a run back down the street they'd just come. "If they want a chase, let's give them one to remember," he laughed and ducked down an alley.

Kir huffed and clenched his talons deeper into Jing's coat's shoulder pad, hanging on for dear life.

Behind them two Cerberus dogs, their heads baying loudly, followed. Jing zigzagged up and down streets and alleyways, leading the dogs in a circle, letting them come close enough to make Kir screech and let them taste the edge of his coat-tails without grabbing enough fabric to catch in their teeth.

Finally, he ran back through the town square with the fish fountain, dodged down a side street and then down an alley that dead-ended against a church, his way blocked by two tall buildings on either side.

Turning, his back against the church's wall, he faced the monstrous dogs with a grin. "I guess you've got me now," he said. "I've nowhere to go, and you've worn me out."

Growling, the dogs advanced in tandem, one stopping to allow the other to come forward until he was only a few feet away from where Jing and Kir stood.

All three of his ebony furred heads leaned forward, though only the center one spoke.

"Yield now. You are under arrest for violating the curfew."

"Eck! Breath mint alert! Breath mint alert!" said Kir, hiding his beak behind his wing. "In fact, buy a case of them so you can share!"

"There's no point in resisting, is there?" Jing shrugged. "You caught me."

The dog was fast, it leapt against the wall as two of its heads swept down, one catching the collar of Jing's coat in its teeth, the other fastening gently but firmly around Kir. Its paws pushed against the wall and it landed back on the ground, carrying Jing in its teeth like it would a puppy by the scruff of its neck.

Jing crossed his arms and allowed the dog to carry him, while Kir kept up a running tirade.

"Hey, watch the feathers! Get your tongue away from me, buddy; I'm not your lunch. What did I say about breath mints?"

Stifling a grin, Jing watched the scenery go by as the Cerberus dog leapt through the streets in a fast even gait that brought them to a guardhouse at the far end of the city.

There a huge, hairy, uncommunicative ogre took them into custody and shoved them into a barred wagon, which set off out of the city.

"So, off to the diamond mines?" asked Kir, cocking his head curiously at Jing.

"Yep."

Satisfied, the bird circled the wooden planks of the wagon and settled down to sleep.

TO BE CONTINUED…


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Disclaimer: I don't own Jing King of Bandits

"Jing, hey Jing, Look! It's a chick!"

Jing woke to the sound of his partner in crime waving his wing excitedly as he used it to point out the window of the barred wagon transporting them to the mines. He straightened up from where he'd been resting his back against the bars and shifted his head to look out between them.

In the forest by the side of the road stood a maiden, nine feet tall, standing as still as a statue. Her arms were down at her sides, and her eyes were closed with her mouth slightly open, as if she'd left it that way to catch raindrops, but the dawn sky was clear.

Jing narrowed his eyes. The woman was dressed in a green, shimmery robe that sparkled like fish scales where the sun hit it. Her red hair fell straight down her back, parting where the tips of her pointed ears came through. Sharp-tipped green nails graced the ends of her fingers, and Jing knew that if the woman's gown weren't covering her feet, he'd see claw-like green nails on her feet as well.

"That's a siren, Kir."

Kir hopped closer to Jing. "A Siren? You mean as in a police noisemaker?"

"No, a siren as in the creature of legend. Sirens are supposed to live in the sea. They sing beautiful songs that enchant men to their doom."

Kir snickered. "How bad can doom be if you get to spend it with a gorgeous babe like that?"

"The siren song bedazzles sailors so they don't notice that their ships are headed towards rocks. Once the ship crashes, the sirens are supposed to come out and eat the sailors."

"Yeesh!" Kir took a step back and glanced out the barred windows once more. "Oh, baby, say it isn't so."

They were passing the siren girl, and Jing pressed his face against the bars to catch a last glimpse.

"I don't think you've got anything to worry about, Kir. That siren looks more like a sentry than a man-eater. It would explain why no one has ever been able to get away from the mines. Even if they escaped underground and ran through the forest, all the jailors would have to do was send word for the sirens to start singing and the prisoners would fall under the siren's spell and get stopped in their tracks." Jing's eyes narrowed. "Or maybe they're just motion sensitive. You station enough sirens all around the mines and no one can get past them."

"Uh, Jing?"

"Yes, Kir?"

"Then how come we just got past them?" Kir brushed at his chest feathers. "I'm still awake."

"We're in a prison transport on a well-marked road. And we're going to the mines, not leaving them." Jing shifted and gathered his legs beneath him. "And if I'm not mistaken, I think we've arrived."

The wagon rolled past two stone pillars, the end points of a tall wall made out of precisely cut blocks of sandstone. Beyond the wall was a vast expanse of lawn, divided into quarters with a rose garden and a fountain in the middle. The wagon went straight on ahead down the road that formed one of the lines dividing the lawn, circling the rose garden area before resuming its journey. It pulled up in front of a long, low building with a wide veranda set a few feet off the ground.

The wagon doors opened and the ogre reached in to give Jing a hand out of the back. Jing ignored it and jumped out on his own, Kir alighting in his usual spot on the boy's shoulder. Glancing around, he saw that the edges of the lawn area were lined with buildings, all made out of the same sandstone as the wall. Gardeners worked in the flowerbeds in front of each, calmly pulling weeds or clipping dead flowers away.

The ogre pointed to the steps leading up to the veranda of the building in front of them. With a shrug, Jing complied and mounted them, crossing the veranda with a glance at an old man sweeping the veranda's wooden planks as a younger boy with a cloth polished the floor along behind him as he swept.

Jing stopped momentarily at a door, then grabbed the bright shiny brass doorknob and stepped through it.

The room he entered looked like a hotel lobby. There was a dark blue carpet on the floor, a few well stuffed chairs were in groups here and there with fresh cut flowers in bowls on the side tables. Directly in front of him was the front desk with a matronly looking grey haired lady seated behind it. The only thing to mar the illusion of gentility were the two ogres standing motionless at either side of the desk. Their eyes swiveled and focused on Jing as he stepped forward.

Without a word, a girl in a maroon vest and black skirt came out from a doorway behind the lady and handed her a file. She flashed Jing a shy smile before retreating back through the doorway.

"You must be the newest curfew violator," said the grey haired lady pleasantly. "I don't see your name here on the intake sheet." She frowned at the offending piece of paper in front of her, but smoothed it away as she glanced inquiringly up at Jing.

"Call me Jing," he said. "This is Kir."

"Pleased ta meetcha!" the bird said truculently, subsiding a bit when Jing clenched the shoulder Kir was sitting on.

"Jing, and Kir." The lady smiled. "I'm Ratafia, but everybody here calls me Matron. It's a bit of a joke, I'm afraid."

"A joke?"

The lady stood up, and Jing saw that she had a small piece of paper in her hand, which she gave to him as she answered. "Matron is what you usually call the head jailor in a womens' prison. Since many of the prisoners here are men…" She glanced at the ogres on either side of her desk. "It's a very silly joke."

"But this is a prison, isn't it?" Jing asked challengingly.

The lady hesitated, then sat down. "I think you'll find that the diamond minds aren't exactly what you expected, but if you do your work and keep your nose clean, you'll do just fine here." She pointed to the paper Jing held in his hand. "Your room assignment is right there. Follow the ogre and he'll take you there."

Shrugging, Jing did as she said, following the large hairy humanoid beast on his right as it motioned for him to follow and set off down the room.

"I think it's great of you to take orders from a human like that." Jing said to the ogre once they were out of earshot of the woman at the desk. They'd left the lobby and were walking down a corridor set with door on either side. It was a very long corridor, and it gave Jing time to strike up a conversation with his jailor.

The ogre didn't respond.

"Not many monsters such as yourself would put up with taking orders from a woman, you know."

Still no response.

"A lot of ogres, such as yourself, might consider it…weak."

The ogre came to the end of the corridor and turned down an identical one without speaking.

Jing cocked his head a bit then launched Kir into the air with a look. Kir winked and began flying next to the ogre, taking up where Jing left off.

"Yeah, and she's not even a babe! Now I can see taking orders from a hot babe, there's no shame in that, but a grandma type? Where's yer pride man? Uh, ogre?"

Still no response.

Undaunted, the bird continued. "Maybe you're not much of an ogre at all. That would explain it! Maybe you're such a loser that they give you guard duty because you can't do anything else."

Listening with only half his attention as Kir continued to roundly insult the large, unresponsive creature, Jing took the opportunity to check out the door locks and windows. The locks he saw were simple, and the windows had no locks at all. Each window looked out on small garden areas with gardeners working on the flowerbeds. The gardeners, mostly older men, worked slowly, pausing often to wipe their foreheads or take drinks from the water canteens on their belts. Usually an ogre or a troll, a shorter, hairier humanoid creature with a horn coming out of its forehead, watched them.

The ogre stopped in front of a door and pointed at it without speaking. Kir flapped his way over to Jing's shoulder and landed.

"Looks like this is the place," commented Jing, looking at the number on the door and comparing it to the number on the piece of paper the lady had given him. He opened the door and went inside.

It was a good sized room with two dressers, two desks, and two beds lining the walls on either side of a large paned window set in the middle of the far wall. On one of the beds was a boy with a mop of blonde, curly hair, lying on his side reading a book. When the door opened, he set the book down and sat up.

"You must be my new room-mate," he said, getting off the bed and coming forward with his hand out. "I'm Glenlivit. And you just took my place as the latest newbie to the mines."

Jing shook the kid's hand. "I'm Jing, and this is Kir."

Kir's eyes brightened. "Glenlivit, huh? Now why does that name sound…"

Jing whirled around and kicked the door closed, dislodging Kir with a squawk.

"Hey Jing, what did you do that for?" he asked, aggrieved.

"Just because the ogre doesn't talk, doesn't mean he can't listen." Jing said, and turned to the boy glancing at them with a puzzled look.

"Listen to what?" he asked.

"To our plan. I promised your sister I'd get you out of here."

The boy stared at Jing for a second, then threw himself back on the bed and started to laugh. "Boy, you really are a newbie."

o-o-o

By the third day Jing learned that the diamond mines were run by the creatures, not the humans. He was assigned a six-hour daily shift in the mines because he was young and healthy. The first day he and Glenlivit had the same shift together. Glenlivit led him to the elevators. They were carpeted and soundless and came to a stop at the base of a well-lighted tunnel. From one end of the tunnel came the sound of picks and shovels hitting rock. Jing automatically started down the tunnel in that direction, only to have Glenlivit catch his shirt and pull him the opposite way.

"Where do you think you're going?" Glenlivit asked.

"This is a diamond mine, right? The mining is going on that way." Jing replied.

Glenlivit laughed. "What do you think? That we dig up the ore ourselves? That's what the trolls are for. Now C'mon!"

Without a word, Jing followed him the other way down the tunnel to a room carved out of the rock. The floor, walls, tables, and chairs were painted white, as were the boxes containing ore piled up on the center of each table. Each table had men and a few women seated around it, sifting through the ore. When they found something they liked, they threw it over their shoulders into sturdy baskets on the floor behind them.

"Humans don't dig," Glenlivit told Jing. "They sort."

Then followed one of the most boring six hour periods of Jing's life. It wasn't that the workers were silent. They spoke the entire time, but it was about their fellow prisoners, not people Jing knew. Their jokes had the stale quality of jokes that had been told a thousand times before. Mostly they just concentrated on sorting the ore and separating the raw diamonds out of it.

Jing preferred his diamonds cut and polished.

By the end of three days he knew he had to get out of the mines or he'd go insane.

o-o-o

"Oof!" Jing landed against the dirt floor of the mine with a thud. It was pitch dark in the tunnel. It seemed that trolls and ogres could see just fine in the dark, unlike humans, and Jing hadn't brought any night vision equipment with him.

"It is forbidden for humans to be in the tunnels. It is dangerous. Return to the sorting room," said the ogre.

"Uh, Jing?" Kir's voice came from somewhere on Jing's left. "Maybe this isn't such a good idea. I just flew into the wall again."

The bird sounded disoriented. Jing didn't blame him. They'd slipped away from the sorting room after their shift was over in order to explore, only to be caught by an ogre. When Jing's makeshift torch went out, things went from bad to worse.

Hand closing around a rock, Jing rolled to his feet and threw it in the direction of the ogre's voice. The ogre made a noise as it hit, then came forward at a run.

Jing leapt back, then found himself scrambling as his feet hit rubble instead of the hardpacked dirt of the tunnel floor. He really had reached the end of the tunnel and found nothing of interest at all. The diamond mines were really just that, working mines.

He heard rather than saw the ogre's arm coming down, and tried to duck, but didn't manage to get far enough under it. The ogre's fist struck the side of his head and sent him flying into the tunnel wall, where he landed with an impact that sent stars dancing in front of his eyes, until darkness covered them, and he slumped, unconscious, at the base of the tunnel wall.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER FOUR

Disclaimer: I don't own Jing King of Bandits

Jing's eyes opened slowly. He was on a bed, not his bed in the mine dormitory, but a different one. The mattress had more give, and the sheets had a lavender scent to them and were softer, not as crisp.

He looked up and saw white, white corkboard ceiling, white squares of light set in the ceiling to provide illumination, and white crown molding on the edge where the wall met the ceiling.

"So, you're finally awake, eh, sonny?" A voice, cracked with age and tinged with amused glee, came from Jing's right hand side. He turned his head on the feather pillow to look.

A wrinkled hand pulled away at a curtain in the same institutional white, which separated their two beds. Jing was in a hospital.

The hand belonged to the owner of a wrinkled, weathered face, out of which two sharp, pale blue eyes looked at him appraisingly.

"Who're you?" asked Jing, and winced as a sharp pain roared through his head. Raising his hand to the offending area, he touched the soft cotton gauze of a bandage.

The old man harrumphed. "I'd take it slowly if I were you, sonny boy," he told Jing. "I heard the doctors say you had a concussion."

"It's Jing, and you still haven't told me your name."

"It's Whisky, Whisky Sour is my name," the old man told him.

"So, what are you in for, Whisky Sour?"

The old guy snorted and shoved the curtain all the way back, revealing a leg in a cast propped up on pillows. "Busted my darned leg tripping over a rake some fool kid left on the lawn."

"Sorry to hear it," Jing returned dryly, "but I meant why were you sent to the diamond mines?"

"Oh that. Curfew violation. I was out drinking with friends and lost track of time. I was more afraid of what my wife'd do to me if I didn't get home than I was of getting caught. That woman has a temper on her like you wouldn't believe!" A slow smile broke over the old man's lips. It was a smile that seemed more nostalgic than cynical.

"The Cerberus dogs swooped me up and I've been here ever since." He sobered. "I haven't seen my wife in ten years."

He stared past Jing out the window set in the wall by Jing's bed, but Jing could tell he wasn't really looking at the manicured lawn with the trimmed hedge outside, but looking into his memories. "I'd give anything to see her again," Whiskey said under his breath.

"Being late doesn't seem like much of a crime," Jing said, breaking the silence that was beginning to drag on.

Whisky snorted. "Crime, you say? There is no real crime in Zenithria, not since the Dark Lady took over anyhow. In the first year any criminal with brains fled. Everyone's too scared to commit any real crimes, and have been for years. Fifteen years she's ruled and I've not heard of any murderers, arsonists, or rapists coming through here since I got stuck here ten years ago. Thing is, any infraction of the Lady's rules is considered a crime. One guy is here for accidentally taking a box of paperclips home from work!"

"Paperclips?" Jing repeated, his eyes reflecting his disbelief.

"Yeah, paperclips." The old man huffed in disgust and wiggled his back against his pillows to get more comfortable. "We've got so many so-called criminals in here that there isn't enough work for them. When I first got here, I worked ten hour shifts, now we're down to six hour shifts. I had three doctors fighting over who got to treat my broken leg because they're so bored with nothing to do all day since hardly anyone gets hurt. The trolls and ogres do all the heavy lifting around here."

At that moment, the curtains at the foot of Jing's bed were thrust aside and two nurses came into his room area.

"Mr. Whisky Sour! Are you bothering our newest patient?" Asked the one on the left, a buxom blonde with green eyes and freckles.

"How are you feeling today, Mr. Jing?" asked the other, a shorter girl with chin length brown hair and dark brown eyes, carrying a tray of food. "I brought you some lunch, in case you were hungry. It's soup and bread. Would you like me to feed it to you?" she asked hopefully.

"That's OK," answered Jing, struggling against his pounding headache to sit up.

"Oh! Let me help you!" cried the blonde. She rushed forward to plump his pillows up behind him, creating a backrest against the headboard.

"Hey, now. What about me? Have my two favorite nurses forgotten me already?" teased Whisky.

The blonde turned with a smile. "Of course not! But you've already had your lunch, and besides, you told Maitai and Daiquiri that they were your two favorite nurses yesterday." she told him chidingly.

"Yes," said the brunette, placing Jing's tray on a bedside stand that swiveled over his lap, making sure that the tray was the proper distance from his torso. "And Mr. Jing here is new to the hospital, so he needs lots of attention." She smiled brightly. "It's tomato bisque with pumpkin seeds, and the bread is a nice healthy seven grain roll, perfect for roughage."

"Er, thanks," said Jing. He glanced at the brunette sitting expectantly on the edge of his bed.

A rapping noise came from the window. Jing, the girls, and Whisky Sour all turned around to look.

"Oh, it's that silly bird again. He keeps trying to sneak in!" exclaimed the blonde nurse and walked over to flap her hands at the window and make 'shoo'ing noises.

"If it's alright with you, could you let him in?" asked Jing.

"But he's a bird!" said the blonde.

"His name's Kir, and I promise, he won't bite." Jing told her, biting his tongue to keep from listing the things the bird could and would do instead. He'd have to tell Kir to behave himself.

Shrugging, the blonde lifted the window sash and let Kir in.

"Whew! Do you know how hard it's been keeping away from that troll-patrol? They're all over the place!" ranted the diminutive bird, flying over to land on Jing's blanket coated feet and leer at the brunette who stared at him with wide eyes.

"Hiya toots, what's your name?" he asked the girl.

"Kir, these are my nurses. Be nice," warned Jing.

"Me?" The bird raised a wing to his chest in mock dismay. "When have I ever not been nice? I'm always nice. Just ask anyone how _nice _I can be."

The brunette gave a nervous giggle and slipped off Jing's bed.

"Cute bird. Is he your pet?" drawled Whisky Sour.

Jing stopped Kir's retort by clenching his toes under the bird's grip. Kir huffed, but ignored the old man's remark.

"So ladies, how long have you worked here?" Jing asked casually, and picked up a bit of bread.

The blonde answered. "Three years. We were both nurses at Mercy General Hospital in town. We were late for our shift and they caught us Jaywalking, so here we are." The girls exchanged sad smiles.

"How is it working here?"

The brunette girl tucked a stray hair behind her ear and answered. "It's OK, I guess. We don't get paid, but the room and board is free, and it's not like they give us much to do when we are on duty. If you mess up here, you just have to work a double shift to make up for it, since they can't fire us or dock our pay."

"It's a lot less stressful than Mercy General," the blonde admitted. "But I really miss seeing my other friends and my family." Her eyes began to fill with tears, which started the other girl tearing up as well.

Unable to take the crying, Kir hopped to the foot of the bed to remonstrate. "Ladies, ladies! No more tears, Kir is here! I'll cheer you up! What do you like, jokes? Stories? I can sing for you!"

"That won't be necessary, Kir." Jing told him dryly, before turning back to the sniffling nurses. "If you don't like it here so much, then why not leave?"

The girls frowned. "No one leaves."

Whiskey Sour snorted. "Doesn't mean they haven't tried, they just always get caught. Give it up, sonny boy. You're here to stay."

o-o-o

White again. Jing saw white when he cracked open his eyes. This time when he woke up in the hospital there was no pain, only a sudden return to consciousness.

"Fancy seeing you here." Whiskey Sour's voice came from the bed next to his and Jing saw the old man grinning at him from over the edge of a tattered magazine. "Told you it was stupid to try to escape. And you missed breakfast, too."

Jing smiled at him. "Who said I was trying to escape?"

Whiskey Sour harrumphed. "You got Sirened, kid. Soon as the doctors check you out, you're up for a triple shift. Try escaping again and they'll change your job assignment to deep cleaning all the toilets for a month."

Shrugging, the younger boy glanced around. "Where's Kir?"

"The bird? He woke up before you. I think he's chatting up the nurses." The old man dropped his magazine across his legs, reached for a cord by his bed, and yanked on it. A bell rang outside the room and immediately two nurses entered the room.

They were both about five feet two inches tall and had dark hair and eyes, but there the resemblance ended. One was thin and delicate looking with soft black hair that fell around her face in wisps, extending in graduating lengths from her bangs. The other was buxom and well curved, with thick black hair tied back in a ponytail that bushed out in back of her. In her arms, against her chest, she cradled Kir like a baby. Kir lay contentedly on his back, wings crossed over his chest, and clawed feet pointed up in the air. Upon seeing Jing, he sat up and flew from the girl's arms to land at the foot of his bed.

"Hiya," he greeted his partner, preening a bit when Jing glanced over his shoulders at the nurses coming toward them.

"Kir!" scolded the buxom one. "You shouldn't be flying yet, you just woke up! You mustn't overextend yourself like that!"

The bird gestured dramatically with one wing in her direction. "Babe, just one minute in your arms was all it took. I'm as good as new!"

The nurse blushed as she and the other one made it to Jing's bedside.

"This is Daiquiri," said Kir, pointing to the blushing girl, "And the other beauty is Maitai."

Maitai dipped into a short curtsy and smiled gently.

"Yep, my two favorite nurses!" Whiskey said.

Daiquiri laughed, her blush beginning to fade as she stepped over to plump up his pillows. "You say that to all the nurses."

"Well, you're all my favorites," Whiskey told her. "You brighten an old man's day."

"I hope you'll still think so after this, it's time for your physical therapy. Excuse us." The nurse smiled apologetically and pulled on the curtain, closing Whiskey Sour's bed off from view.

"What did my poor old broken leg ever do to you?" groused Whiskey.

They began a familiar teasing banter that Jing tuned out as he concentrated on the other nurse.

"I'm a bit thirsty, could you get me a glass of water?" he asked her.

Maitai curtsied again. "Yes, sir. At once, sir." And with that, she left the room.

"Nice girl," commented Kir. "Daiquiri told me she used to be a parlormaid in a mansion, until she was framed for theft."

"Framed?" Jing let his eyes drift to the doorway where Maitai exited.

"Yeah, the owner of the mansion had a son who had his eye on Maitai. I guess his rich girlfriend didn't like it and accused her of stealing a brooch when the son was away. Guess that's one way to get rid of your rival. Daiquiri's here because she made a mistake filling out an accounting form and they thought she'd embezzled funds from the hospital where she worked. Poor kids."

Jing's eyes darkened. "So many tragedies…" He shook himself and looked at Kir. "So, did you figure out the range?"

Kir nodded and lowered his voice. "Best I can guess is the Siren's are posted about fifty yards apart, and they got both of us when we got fifty yards away from them." Kir ruffled his feathers in disgust "Fifty yards! How are you supposed to make time with a babe who can put you out like a light before you get within reaching distance of her?"

"I think that's the point," Jing told him dryly. "Someone hasn't left much to chance. The sirens' ranges overlap, so there's no way of slipping between them. We'll have to go to Plan B. Do you remember where they are?"

Kir grinned and tapped his head with his wing. "Sure I do! It's all up here."

"Good, because I think we're about to start our triple shift now," Jing said, nodding towards the doorway where Maitai scurried, glass of water in hand, ahead of two doctors and a grim faced ogre, sent to take him back to the mine.

o-o-o

Glenlivit came on shift just as the third and final leg of Jing's punishment shift began. He took his seat quietly next to Jing at the sorting table.

"You didn't come home from the hospital, and then I heard you tried to escape. What happened?"

Jing glanced over at the troll by the door and lowered his voice. "What happened was, I've come up with a plan to break out of here. Are you in?"

Glenlivit snorted, and stared up from the rocks on the table in front of him to glare at Jing. "Are you crazy?" he whispered back. "You just got stuck with a triple shift and you want to try it again?"

"A triple shift isn't the end of the world," Jing told him dryly. "Besides, I didn't do it for you. I did it for Campari. She's waiting for you in Nadiria."

Glenlivit's hands went still on the ore in front of him. His fingers closed around a piece of rock and gripped it. "That's not fair. I know I'll never see my sister again. I've made my peace with that." He blinked angrily and threw the rock back into the bin on the center of the table, then drew his hand back to wipe at his eyes. He turned away from Jing to hide his face.

The bandit stared at Glenlivit's back for a second, then reached back into the bin to retrieve the rock the boy threw there. He tapped his co-worker on the shoulder and when Glenlivit turned back around he showed him the rock. Nestled in the center gleamed a small black diamond.

"What's not fair is not trying to get back to her. I promised Campari I'd get you out, and I will. Trust me."

Jing saw hope warring with despair in Glenlivit's eyes, then the boy reached out, took the rock from Jing and threw it over his shoulder into the 'keeper' basket. "I'll do it," he said, and with a last look, got back to work.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Disclaimer: I still don't own Jing King of Bandits

"Are you sure this will work?" whispered Glenlivit.

Jing, Kir, and Glenlivit were huddled in the dirt beneath the hedge that lined part of the sandstone wall of the mining compound.

"Have a little faith, kid. I've been watching the troll patrols for days now. I know their schedule better than they do," Kir told him.

"Kir knows what he's doing," affirmed Jing, his eyes on two trolls marching side by side along the dirt path that paralleled the wall. The trolls walked in time with each other, their eyes constantly moving from side to side. They reached the corner of the wall and turned, heading right and away from the hedge where the three conspirators waited. The trolls came up to a stand of pine trees and disappeared behind them.

"We've got forty seconds, go!"

Kir flew to the top of the wall and hissed, "Next patrol's coming, hurry!"

Jing grabbed Glenlivit's hand and pulled him along towards the wall at a run. Letting go of the boy, he leapt and made it to the top of the wall, turned and crouched. As the bandit king got into position, he flicked his left wrist. A thin cord shot out from a disk concealed under his sleeve. Glenlivit grabbed the end of it and began walking up the wall, coiling the rock-climbing rope as he went.

"Guys, you gotta hurry!" urged Kir. "Amateurs, sheesh!" he muttered, hopping with irritation along the top of the wall.

Glenlivit made it to the top just as another troll duo appeared around the corner of the building and began trudging along the path towards them.

"Hold on," whispered Jing and threw himself backward off the wall.

"Oof!" Glenlivit pulled his nose off Jing's sternum, reared back and looked around. They'd landed on some shrubs. He rolled off Jing and got to his feet, rubbing his nose.

"You OK?" he asked quietly, the words muffled under his hand.

Jing propped himself up on his elbows and held up a broken branch for Glenlivit to see. "Fine. Juniper berry bushes are great for breaking falls. I've used them before. How's the nose?" he asked, hopping off the bush and to his feet in one fluid motion.

"I think it's broken," Glenlivit told him, his eyes watering in pain.

Jing came forward and took a look. "No, it's not broken, but it may swell up a little."

"No problem," Kir told the golden haired boy as he landed on Jing's shoulder. "Chicks love a few battle wounds. It'll make them think you're dangerous. They love that sort of stuff."

"Come on, we've got to get going. Try to keep up."

And with that, Jing took off at a run. Glenlivit dropped his hand from his nose and followed. Soon he was huffing and puffing, but he forced himself to keep up as they wove through trees and their feet pounded into grass and dirt covered with pine needles.

As they ran, Jing whispered a command to Kir, who slipped off his shoulder and onto his arm. The bird and the appendage began to merge into a weapon that could produce Jing's signature power burst, known as the kir royale.

Glenlivit's eyes grew big as he saw Jing extend his hand, pointing at the dark forest ahead of them.

"Countdown!" Jing commanded.

"We're at 70 yards," the bird called out. "65…60…55…50."

"Give me a kir royale!" shouted Jing.

Green energy shot out from Jing's arm. Burst after burst lit up the forest in flashes of emerald light. Then Jing dropped his arm and Kir detached. The bird dipped then rose in the air, flying ahead of them.

"Direct hit!" he exulted, gesturing to a pile of dust on the ground. Glenlivit glanced at it but didn't see anything special about it. Frowning, he kept running after Jing.

After several minutes, Jing came to a stop between two trees.

Exhausted, Glenlivit jogged up and leaned over, hands on his legs, bent over and sucking air into his aching lungs.

"This road leads to Nadiria. Go find your sister." Jing pointed to a dirt track in front of them.

Straightening, Glenlivit stared at his escape route. "I don't believe it. We made it."

"Well, good luck," said Jing, and turned back to the forest.

"Wait!" Glenlivit reached out and grasped Jing's sleeve. Jing glanced at the boy's hand, but let it stay.

"Where do you think you're going?" asked the blonde boy. His face was red and streaked with perspiration, and his curls were matted from the exertion of running.

Jing stepped back, pulling his sleeve out of Glenlivit's grip. "Back," he told the other boy simply. "There's an old man back there who hasn't seen his wife in ten years. I'm going to break him out too."

"You can't, you'll get caught."

Eyebrows raised, Jing grinned. "I got you out didn't I?"

"I still don't know how you did it, but yes," Glenlivit answered slowly.

"Sheesh, weren't you watching? Jing and I blasted that Siren chick to smithereens." Kir told the boy, swooping down to land on a branch nearby. "The road's clear both directions," he told Jing.

"Then that pile of dust was…"

"What's left of a siren," nodded Kir happily. "Shame too, wasting a beautiful broad like that but…" the bird shrugged. "Can't be helped."

Glenlivit's jaw dropped. He closed his mouth and said, "I didn't even see the Siren ahead of us."

"Neither did I," Jing told him. "Kir remembered where she was from the first time we escaped from the compound."

The blonde boy looked from the bird to the bandit and shook his head. "That may have worked this time, but it won't again." He raised his head and glanced over the treetops a minute, then pointed. "Look. They're already bringing in replacements."

Two harpies, a mix of flesh and feathers with broad wings flapping regally in the sky, flew over the treetops. In their clawed feet, they gripped the shoulders of two sirens who hung silently, arms at their sides, placidly accepting the unusual method of transportation.

Jing watched expressionlessly as the harpies and sirens flew by. Kir hopped onto a higher branch to try to get a better look at the female forms.

"You're not the first person to try to break out of the mines." Glenlivit told Jing sadly. "Every time it happens, the Dark Lady just tightens security. They'll probably be bringing in even more sirens and double the troll guard."

"Then you'd better get going," Jing said.

"You're not seriously going to try to go back to the mines?" asked Glenlivit, moving towards the road, but looking back anxiously at the bandit king.

"No, I've decided to take a different route. This time I'm going to the source of the problem."

"Huh?"

"I'm going back to Zenithria. I'd like to have a chat with the Dark Lady."

Glenlivit shook his head. "You're a lunatic, you know that don't you?"

Jing didn't answer the question, he just stood there with a small smile on his face. "Give my regards to Campari," he said, and motioning to Kir to come to him, he turned and began to trudge down the road away from Nadiria and towards Zenithria.

o-o-o

Grappa, the burly tavernkeeper, was wiping out a glass mug when Jing and Kir entered his establishment. His jaw dropped.

"Hello again."

"You…you're back? I thought you got arrested." Grappa set the mug down on the counter without breaking his stare.

Two redheads peered out from the doorway wearing identical expressions of wonder as Porter and Claret appeared.

"I was, but I'm back now," said Jing simply.

Grappa's brows met in the middle of his forehead as he frowned. "That's impossible."

Shrugging, Jing sauntered up to the bar and sank down on a stool, Kir hopping from his shoulder to the countertop to peer disappointedly at the empty mug Grappa left on the bar.

"How did you…" began Grappa, then his expression changed from incredulity to determination. "Look, if you really did escape, then you've got to get out of here. The Cerberus dogs will be on your trail."

"I doubt it," Jing told him. "There's a little potion I have. Rub it on your feet and it fools the dogs' scent glands. They won't be able to track me."

"Yeah, and did I mention it reeks to high heaven to birds too?" Kir commented as he pulled his head out of the mug, which he'd been inspecting for traces of beer.

Grappa stared for a bit, then asked bluntly, "So why did you come back?"

"I wanted to have a chat with the Dark Lady."

Grappa began shaking his head in denial before Jing even stopped speaking.

"There's no way. Entry into the tower is by invitation only. It's said that the Dark Lady has legion upon legion of monsters left over from the war, and they're all guarding either the mines or the palace and the tower. There's no way you can get in."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that." Jing told him.

"Er, Jing?" Kir was kicking at the bartop nervously. "Legion upon legion of monsters? That's not good. Let's just go. There's nothing in this burg worth staying for. And we've made exactly nothing from this caper so far."

"With that many guards, there must be something worth stealing in the tower," Jing pointed out.

"Stealing?" Grappa shook his head. "You really must have a death wish. You want to try to steal from the Dark Lady? Anyway, so far as I know there's nothing worth stealing there anymore. The Absolut family stripped the palace and sold all the royal family's treasures years ago, and all the diamonds from the mines get exported. The only thing in the tower is the Dark Lady and her monsters."

Jing's eyes narrowed. "That woman stole the lives and happiness of countless people. Many people are suffering because of her laws. I plan to change that."

"Can we help?" The twins stepped into the room, their faces grim.

"Boys…" said their father warningly. "Get back into the kitchen, this doesn't concern you."

"But father!" The twin on the right began angrily as his brother clenched his fists.

"Enough!"

Grappa's explosive response made the first redhead jump and look at the floor, but the other twin stepped forward and said, calmly, "That's not true. Claret and I have both lost friends to the mines. If Jing really did escape from the mines, then maybe he can do what he says."

Grappa rounded the bar and came to a stop in front of his sons, towering a good foot taller than his boys.

"I am still your father," he told them, rolling his shirtsleeves up threateningly. "I know you've lost friends, we all have, and that's exactly why I'm not going to let you go. I'm not going to lose you too, and if I have to knock you both out and lock you in the wine cellar to do it, I will."

The twins stared at their father mutinously for a while, but in the end their gazes dropped, cowed by the determination in the bulkier man's eyes.

"Hey, I don't want to cause any family problems here," Jing said from his barstool, putting his hands out placatingly. "Besides, I work better alone."

"Ahem!" Kir glared.

"I mean apart from Kir," laughed Jing. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."

Grappa shot him a look of frank disbelief, and shoved his boys back into the kitchen.

"So, you got a plan, Jing?" asked Kir.

"All in good time, Kir. All in good time."


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

Disclaimer: I don't own Jing King of Bandits.

Jing and Kir, who was riding on the bandit's shoulder, made their way to the palace without incident. It was a long L-shaped two storey building set behind a high stone wall, and in the center of the main building rose a high, rounded tower. The tower was thick in diameter, and would have looked squat had it been a short tower, but as it was the tower reached towards the sky, ending with a circular terrace and a pointed roof, which topped it like a witch's hat.

The main gate lay open, and Jing crossed the courtyard without incident. The few trolls walking there didn't so much as spare him a glance. Up a flight of broad stone steps, the palace's double doors stood open. Around to the right some wagons were being unloaded, but the trolls unloading them were intent on their tasks and not interested in any visitors walking through the front gate.

"Sheesh, doesn't this place have any security?" muttered Kir, glancing at the unguarded door.

Jing went on without answering, climbing the steps and crossing the threshold as if he belonged. Inside was a large rectangular hall, dimly lit by the sunlight streaming in through the open door and the tall arched windows set into the walls. Once upon a time it had been a room for greeting guests, with an immense fireplace and dais at one end, but the throne on the dais was covered with a dustcloth, and all the sound of activity and habitation came from the right, where the building fell away into the broad downstroke of its 'L' shape.

Sparing the doorway to the right only a cursory glance, Jing focused on his goal, the rounded stone wall set into the center of the entry hall. It was the base of the tower, and it protruded into the room as if it had broken through the roof and slammed into the ground below as an architectural embarrassment. On either side of the door of the tower stood two immense cyclopses. They had human shape, but were monstrously large. Their heads nearly brushed the top of the two-storey tall ceiling, and each carried a club studded with iron spikes. Their single eyes took up the whole top half of their faces, and both immediately focused on Jing.

Grinning, Jing shrugged his shoulder to let Kir off. "Looks like we may have to fight our way in, Kir."

"Is there any other way?" Kir smirked back, and swooped forward, aiming towards the tower doorway.

The cyclopses were fast. Kir barely had time to alter his course and avoid being hit like a baseball by one of their cudgels. Meanwhile Jing found himself dancing back to avoid a cudgel of his own. Flicking his wrist, he activated the device under his coat sleeve and out slid his blade from its special sheath strapped to his forearm. He managed to block the cudgel with it, but found himself pushed backwards by the force of the blow against his blade. He dodged and retreated, then advanced from the left, kicking off the tower wall, but found that he had to switch to a forward roll midair as the monster's cudgel followed his trajectory with unerring accuracy. The monster's goal was to keep him from the tower, and despite its bulk, the cyclopse's reflexes were quick. After several minutes of feinting and dodging, Jing noticed a weakness.

The cyclopses had no sense of teamwork. Each was an individual guard, one taking on Jing while the other chased Kir away from the door. Jing got an idea.

"Kir, remember that time we had to get past the sumo wrestlers with the swords?"

The bird executed a backwards aerial somersault and kept flapping as his cyclopse advanced, its cudgel cutting systematically through the air. "Good call!" he squawked at Jing. "Meet you in the middle!"

Jing dodged his own cudgel, and began leading the cyclopse back to its original position by the tower door. Meanwhile, Kir also flew in a pattern that led his cyclopse back towards the door. Mindlessly, the cyclopses lumbered forward.

Directly in front of the doorway, Jing stopped, back to back with Kir, who flapped to stay in place.

"Three…two…one," murmured the bandit.

Two cudgels came down at their intended targets, but at the last second, Jing and Kir shot away, and the cudgels, instead of squashing bird and bandit into the ground, connected with other targets.

With a 'whomp' each cyclopse smashed its cudgel into the other's head, crushing it. There was a shower of dust as the two creatures exploded into particles.

"Achoo!" sneezed Kir, shaking his beak to get the dust off of it. "Someone's gonna need to vacuum around here," he commented, hopping over to kick at the shoulder high pile of dirt marking where the cyclopse who'd chased him had been.

Jing rose to his feet from the spot where he'd landed in a crouch and glanced at the pile marking his own cyclopse. "It seems any mortal blow finishes these guys."

Kir glanced around incredulously. "You mean you didn't know for sure!"

"Uncertainty is what makes life interesting," Jing said and advanced towards the tower door.

o-o-o

It was like walking into instant gloom.

The groundfloor level of the tower had no windows, and passing from the entry hall into it was like treading into a cave, dark, silent, and still.

Jing felt Kir's claws gripping the material on his shoulder. The normally ebullient bird spoke in a hushed tone very unlike his usual confident one.

"Jing, I got a bad feeling about this place."

"Hush."

Jing closed his eyes and listened. The room they'd stepped into was huge and circular. From the light spilling from the doorway they'd entered he'd seen a massive stone staircase that protruded into the center of the circular room, leading up to the next level of the tower.

It wasn't the staircase that worried him; it was whatever lay in the shadows along the walls. He could hear it now, a constant susurration, as things beyond the reach of his eyes moved restlessly against the stone walls. And they'd heard him too.

Opening his eyes, he turned his face towards where the majority of the slight sounds were coming from, and saw innumerable eyes looking back at him. Many pairs of red, beady eyes shone out of the darkness, and came forward.

The eyes belonged to giant black spiders, the smallest of which was four feet tall. They crawled down from the walls, shimmied down transparent strands of webbing, and clicked their mandibles together hungrily.

There was really only one option. Jing took off running towards the staircase as if a Cerberus dog were on his heels, causing Kir to stifle a squawk and hang on for dear life.

As his feet touched down on a stone half way across the floor, it shifted slightly beneath him. Behind him, he heard the tower doors swing shut, taking the only source of light with them.

There was pitch darkness all around. Jing might as well have had his eyes closed. He stopped and backpedaled, guessing rightly that the spiders would converge on the base of the stone steps, since it was the only logical destination.

Well then, it was time to be illogical.

"Kir, take me up!"

"You got it, Jing."

They'd worked together for so long that Jing knew he could depend on the bird to obey without question.

Kir flapped his wings and Jing felt his shoes leave the ground, and the material of his coat bunch painfully under his armpit as Kir pulled him upwards by his grip on Jing's shoulder. Jing also felt the swish of motion beneath the soles as the spiders raced towards the place where he'd just been. Evidently they could see just fine in the dark.

There was an unlit wrought iron chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. When Kir took them high enough, Jing grabbed it with his left hand, and hung suspended from it.

"I think it's time for another Kir royale," he told the bird.

"Yeah!" Kir agreed enthusiastically. "It's extermination time!"

Flesh and bone molded with bird as Jing's arm became a formidable weapon. Burst after burst of green light shot forth, lighting up the room like a military war zone. Spiders burst apart into piles of dust. Jing lost count of the number destroyed, he just kept aiming and firing until at last there were no more spiders.

Lowering his arm, he shook it and allowed Kir to fly off and land on the floor, where he began to complain loudly about the dust.

Allowing himself a weary grin, Jing reached into his coat lapel into a side pocket and brought out a solid gold cigarette lighter, a souvenir from an old job. Flicking it on, he pulled himself up, forcing his sore left hand to maintain a grip on the chandelier. He'd seen the stubby remains of candles, their bony looking remains white in the light from the doorway before it had closed, before the battle began. It only took a minute to relight the old candles.

Kir was right, the room was dusty, and not just from the spider remains. Jing released his grip on the chandelier and dropped to the floor, flexing his tired fingers.

"Hey Jing!"

"Huh?" Jing hummed back to his partner, who was kicking at one of the dust piles disgustedly.

"Why spiders?"

"What do you mean?" Jing asked, replacing the cigarette lighter in his pocket. The light from the chandelier, though dim, was enough to see by. Piles of dust littered the floor. There'd been at least thirty or forty spiders, judging by the amount.

"I thought chicks hated spiders, so why would a chick create so many of them?" Kir sounded sincerely confused, as if pondering the mysteries of the female psyche was one of the great philosophical questions of the universe.

"Maybe that's why she created them," shrugged Jing. "Perhaps she thought that if they scared her, they'd scare us too."

Kir tapped his clawed foot meditatively. "Well, they don't scare me. Spiders can make a tasty snack if there isn't a restaurant around for a civilized meal, but you don't usually have to worry about them snacking on you in return! They're actually quite nice in a crunchy sort of way, kinda like potato chips."

"I'll take your word for it," Jing returned dryly.

He turned and looked up the stone staircase leading to the next level. It ended in a long, flat landing at the top of the room. A small square had been cut into the ceiling of the ground floor level to allow people to ascend the stairs without bumping their heads, but there wasn't much space between the top of the steps and the edge of the ceiling. Tall people would have to duck.

Jing wondered why the room was set up that way. The tower already had one nasty architectural surprise, and Jing remembered his brief spurt of panic when he'd felt the flooring stone shift beneath his feet and heard the door swinging shut behind him. The ground floor level of the tower was designed to trap people within. Who knew what lay ahead on the upper level?

Jing stared at the steps for a moment, then grinned. "Come on, Kir. Let's go see what's up there."

TO BE CONTINUED.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

Disclaimer: I don't own Jing King of Bandits

Water was everywhere. Jing and Kir stepped into an antechamber that smelled of damp stones and mossy growth. It was set up so that when you exited the landing from the stair leading to the ground floor, you had to close the door behind you before the door leading out of the antechamber would open. It was an airlock of sorts.

Now Jing and his trusty bird companion were treading slowly up the shallow stone steps of a staircase walled on both sides by water kept back by thick glass plates, which rose up to the top of the high ceiling of the room. The room was at least two if not three stories tall. They were now at the part of the tower that rose above the palace's rooftop. The reason Jing knew this is because of the rectangular patches of light that shone through the water, and the rectangular windows at the very top of the room, half submerged by water themselves.

Where there were windows there was light. It was a watery, diffused light, but it was enough to light their way up the staircase that rose right up through the center of the room.

"Er, Jing, was that a fish?"

"Where?" Jing asked, trusting his friend's instincts. The water was murky, like seawater, and in constant motion. If Kir saw movement that looked like a fish, then something had moved within the water.

"There." Kir pointed with his wing at a spot on the right hand side glass wall, all that was keeping the water away from them.

Jumping five steps, Jing stood at the spot Kir indicated, pressing his hand against the cold glass as he peered through it into the watery depths beyond.

At first he saw nothing. Then he noticed that the light from one of the windows in the wall on the far side of the water wasn't constant. Something was swimming in front of the window, obscuring the light as it passed before it. It was something big, too.

"So Jing, did ya see it?" Kir landed on Jing's shoulder and pressed his beak to the glass, eyeing the water with a worried expression. "Was it a…?" The bird's voice trailed off in shock as a face appeared suddenly in the glass.

It was twice the size of a normal human face, with green skin, darker green hair, moustache, and beard that fanned out in the water. Its eyes were a vibrant shade of jade, and it stared coldly through the glass. Broad shoulders led to a well-sculpted torso and weight lifter's arms. It clutched a three-pronged trident in its right hand. Its lower torso's green flesh turned to scales right at what should have been its belly button, as human features became fishlike, the body terminating at the end of a long eel-shaped tail with fins. It should have looked ridiculous, but the way the creature's long tail snaked about and rippled suggested that the muscles of its fish half were just as intimidating as the muscles bulging from its arms.

"Merman!" Jing said the word like an epithet, and jumped back from the glass. Glancing behind him, he saw two more mermen staring at him from behind the glass walls on the other side of the staircase.

Then he heard it, a sharp ringing sound.

Glancing back at the first merman, Jing saw that he was tapping his trident against the glass, the metal's impact on the thick glass creating the noise. It was echoed on the other side, and turning, Jing saw that the other two mermen, now joined by a third, were copying their leader's gesture, tapping their own tridents against the other wall of glass. The noise became a cacophony.

"Jing, I got another bad feeling about this!" yelled Kir, and flapped himself aloft.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valor, Jing took off running, leaping up several steps at a time, but it was too late. He'd known it was too late from the first moment he'd seen the merman. Why create a mer-monster who fought best underwater if you never intended your victims to be in the water with it?

The glass walls shuddered then disappeared, drawn upwards by an unseen mechanism triggered by the vibrations from the mermen's tridents. The water flooded in, catching Jing and throwing him around like a ragdoll in its angry current. He could hear, vaguely, Kir's voice squawking at him, but it took him a while to swim his way to the surface.

As his head broke out of the water, he had just a second to gasp in a breath before he saw it. One of the mermen was treading water with his fish tail, his human-like torso fully out of the water as he stared at the water, searching for Jing. Jing dove back under just as a trident skimmed the surface right above him.

His best bet was to swim as far away from where he'd just been as he could, to keep his attackers from finding him easily. However, Jing reckoned without the other three mermen. He saw movement from out of the corner of his eye, but when he swiveled his body to look, a fishtail caught him in the side and sent him hurtling through the water to land with a thump against the stone wall.

Jing's heart chilled. Landing against the wall hurt, and he was lucky he hadn't broken any ribs, but worse yet was the realization of exactly how powerful the merman's tail had to be to propel him halfway across the massive room like that, and underwater too.

Coughing, Jing surfaced again.

"Jing!" Kir squawked from where he was flapping, four feet above the water, his wing tips practically touching the ceiling. Flooding the central stair area had lowered the water level enough to give Kir room to fly between the ceiling and the water's surface, but it didn't give him much room to maneuver. Regardless, Kir began to make his way over to Jing.

Jing opened his mouth to shout a warning as a merman surfaced directly behind Kir and aimed his trident. Before Jing could shout, the trident was loosed. Luckily, Kir's instinct for self-preservation kicked in. Sensing the movement behind him, he backpedaled midair and flapped to gain altitude. The trident shot under him, catching a few tail feathers and causing Kir to shriek an epithet in outrage as the loss of the feathers and the airstream of the trident's passing caused him to spin backwards, beak over claws, to land in the water.

Jing swam quickly over to the bird, who was flapping along the surface of the water while trying to examine his tail to assess the damage. At any other time, Kir's vanity would be amusing, but with four mermen out to get them…it was time to get serious.

Jing grabbed Kir by his clawed feet and shouted, "Give me a Kir Royale."

Kir obliged, clamping onto Jing's arm and transforming into a weapon, just as his comrade dove beneath the surface.

Underwater it was quiet, eerily so, but the danger was still all around even if they couldn't hear it. The only warning was movement, and Jing began to concentrate all his attention into his eyes.

There! A flash of tail, going inordinately fast through the water, caught his eye, but before he could aim there was another, closer movement, this time from behind. Jing barely got his feet out of the way in time as a trident whizzed beneath him. Figuring out the trajectory, Jing aimed and fired his Kir Royale energy burst, but the merman was too quick. Another merman dove from above, intending to take Jing and Kir to the bottom of the room, pinning them to the floor with his trident.

Jing twisted, avoiding the trident, but not the tail that whipped around and caught him in the side, causing him to lose the breath he'd been holding.

Frantic for air, he clawed his way to the surface, and gasped in oxygen as he treaded water, his movements somewhat hampered by the bird clamped to his right arm. A merman popped up in front of Jing, so he aimed, yelling his customary command, "Give me a Kir Royale!"

He missed. The merman submerged too quickly. They were all too quick. There was just the barest suggestion of movement and then they were somewhere else. The water was their home, and in it Jing was the fish out of water.

There was an enormous surge in the water below him. It was the only warning Jing had before he was thrown up and out of the water by a fishtail that seemed determined to slam him against the ceiling. With little time to spare, Jing twisted midair so that it was his feet and not his head connecting with the ceiling.

He shoved off the stone ceiling quickly, and aimed for the one place the mermen wouldn't think he'd go, towards the window set at the top of the wall a few feet away near the ceiling.

The windows were rectangular, and too narrow for a merman to do more than wave an arm out of them if they were so inclined and if the windows even opened, which Jing doubted. However, Jing wasn't a merman. He was small. It was a useful quality in a thief. He also had the remaining momentum from the merman's blow on his side. He hoped it was enough to break the glass.

Jing careened through the window, raining shards from the shattered window on the roof of the palace below. There was the sound of wind rushing past Jing's ears as he fell towards the ground, grateful for his photographic memory of building layouts. Grabbing his knees, he somersaulted, changing his path so that he'd miss the roof and land beyond it.

Thud! The welcome feel and rustle of straw met Jing's back as he landed in the hay wagon he'd seen coming into the palace. He shook Kir off his arm and the bird sneezed, rolling off to come to a stop against the high wooden side of the wagon. Kir got to his feet and leaned against the wagon's planks, huffing and puffing.

"Mermen?" he huffed angrily. "You've got to be kidding me! They were all men! There wasn't a babe in the bunch. Who creates mermen without creating mermaids to go with them? It's cruel, I tell ya!"

Jing smiled and lay back against the sun warmed hay, relishing the feeling of the sun's rays on his face. Only Kir would be angry because the beasts out to kill him weren't cute. His smile faded as he processed exactly what their defeat meant. The tower was going to be a tougher nut to crack than he'd thought.

o-o-o

Jing ran through the streets of Zenithria's capitol, Kir flying along behind him. It was nearly evening, and the dusk shadows lay heavily across the streets, blanketing them in gloom. Jing's feet made scraping noises across the cobblestones as he ran, more concerned with speed than secrecy. The doors of shops and apartment buildings on either side of the street were closed and locked already.

At the octagonal fountain, Jing swerved into a side street and put on a burst of speed towards the only structure that still had a light in its front room, Grappa's bar.

Grappa had just swept the last bit of dust off the front stoop and laid his broom against the wall to fumble in his pocket for the key to lock up.

"You got room for two more in there?" Jing asked with a smile as he skidded to a stop in front of the astonished barkeep.

Grappa's mouth fell open and he gaped as he surveyed the damp thief before him. Kir dropped down and landed with a spray of water droplets on Jing's shoulder.

"Yeah, and you got any more of that rabbit stew?" the bird asked hopefully.

Grappa frowned and grabbed Jing, shoving him quickly inside the bar before glancing up and down the street, then closing the door and locking it firmly behind him.

Inside the bar, three men looked up in bleary astonishment at the addition to their party, for it was a party, judging by the shreds of wrapping paper and packages on the table before them. There were also the remains of a small cake, and lots of bottles and glasses littering the wooden surface.

"Someone having a birthday?" asked Kir, eyeing the cake crumbs greedily.

The man in the center, a tall guy with a long face, smiled drunkenly. "S'me! S'my birthday!"

The other two cackled and slapped the table, then began singing 'Happy Birthday' for what was obviously the hundredth time.

Grappa strode into the room and led Jing and Kir to the bar.

"What happened?" he asked bluntly.

Jing glanced over at the table of happy drunks, still well within earshot.

Seeing his gaze, the barkeep grimaced. "That's Slivovitz, Gimlet, and Malt. They're cousins. They're harmless. Every year they come here to celebrate Gimlet's birthday away from their womenfolk. I put them up for the night when they're too drunk to make their way home."

"Yay, Grappa!" hooted the drunk on the left, a short pudgy sort with rumpled dark hair and a face filled with boozy cheer.

"He's the man! Down with the Cerberus dogs!" chortled the one on the left, a broad shouldered stocky sort who raised his glass and downed the contents in a gulp.

The tall gaunt man in the middle nodded sagely, then gripped the table as the movement nearly made him overbalance out of his chair. "They can give us a curfew, but they can't keep us from going to work the next day with a hangover!"

"Hear hear!" the other two roared and thumped their glasses on the table, and dissolved into laughter.

Reassured, Jing turned back to Grappa and answered his question. "The tower is going to be a bit tougher to break into than I'd thought."

Dead silence filled the bar.

Jing turned around to find the cousins staring at him in shock.

"Dad, the rooms are ready…" One of the twins thumped downstairs, stopping at the bottom step as he realized he'd broken the silence that fell over the bar. He glanced around inquiringly and saw Slivovitz, Gimlet, and Malt staring wide-eyed at the bar.

Swiveling his head, he caught sight of Jing and his eyes lit up. "You're back!"

"Who's back?" another voice hollered from the top of the stairs as the other twin craned his neck over the banister to look. "Jing!" he yelled joyously as he saw the answer to his question sitting on a barstool with Kir at his shoulder.

Both twins ran forward to greet him, laughing and talking all at once. "We didn't think you'd make it! What was the Tower like? Did you see the Dark Lady? Were there many monsters?"

Jing put his hands up in mock surrender. "Hey, one question at a time," he smiled as the twins kept up their excited babble.

A piercing whistle split the air and the twins broke off their excited interrogation.

The tall man, Gimlet, was standing, two fingers in his mouth. He removed them, shook his head as if to clear cobwebs, and stared hard at Jing.

"You were in the tower?" he asked incredulously.

Jing nodded.

"Impossible!" Gimlet proclaimed.

Kir smirked. "Obviously, you don't know my friend here so well. Jing could steal the stars from the sky if he wanted to."

"He broke out of the mines!" one of the twins said as the other nodded vigorously.

Gimlet put a hand to his head and rubbed it, his eyes practically swirling as he tried to process the information. "Is this true?"

"Yes," answered Jing steadily.

Grappa nodded reluctant confirmation. "He did. I got word he broke Glenlivit out of the mines. He's safe with his sister in Nadiria."

"How?" asked Gimlet.

"Doesn't matter." Jing shrugged. "That's in the past. Right now I'm planning to get into that tower and get rid of the Dark Lady."

Gimlet lowered his hand from his face and leaned forward. "How can I help?"

Jing gave a crooked smile. "Can you figure out how to get past several thousand gallons of water filled with fifteen foot long mermen with tridents?"

"That's what's in the tower?" asked the pudgy drunk, blinking. His other cousin, the broad shouldered one, shook his head in dismay.

Gimlet, on the other hand, merely sharpened his gaze. "I could do it, if the only thing between the water and the outside is that tower's stone wall."

Kir flew over to the table, landed, and looked Gimlet up and down appraisingly. "Sorry to burst your bubble, buddy, but you ain't strong enough to knock down walls."

A self-depreciating smirk crossed the gaunt man's face, creasing the lines around his eyes and mouth. "Maybe not, but one of my siege machines might."

"Siege machine?" asked Jing.

Grappa sighed heavily. "Gimlet was a professor of medieval history and engineering, before the university closed down." Jing raised his eyebrows, and the barkeep continued. "The university closed because so many of the students kept getting sent to the mines. Gimlet is an architect now."

"And a darned good one!" the pudgy cousin said firmly.

"Hear hear, Slivovitz!" Malt seconded, thumping his glass on the table.

"Slivovitz is a clerk in city hall, and Malt works in his family's lumber yard. Every year they'd work together gathering the permits and lumber to allow Gimlet's classes to construct a siege machine for their final project."

"We'll help!" one of the twins said, staring defiantly at his father.

"Yeah," the other twin said, quietly but with determination.

Grappa stared at his two sons, then looked across the room to where Gimlet was standing, gripping the table with both hands as he swayed, trying to shake the affects of the alcohol he'd consumed. The expression in his eyes wasn't that of a drunk though.

The barkeep dipped his head in acquiescence. "Fine. We'll all help."

"Grappa." Jing said wonderingly.

"I know what I said before," the man growled. "But who am I to stand in the way? If my boys want to help build a siege machine, then I'm all for it."

As the twins whooped and hollered with joy, a look passed between Grappa and Jing. The boys were to build the machine, nothing else. Grappa's fatherly instinct to protect his sons was still in full swing. Jing met his gaze and nodded agreement.

Gimlet walked over to the bar on unsteady feet while his cousins slammed their glasses against the table and added to the general cacophony.

"Barkeep, I'm going to need coffee, and lots of it," he said, then passed out cold on the floor.


	8. Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

Disclaimer: I don't own Jing King of Bandits.

"Heave, men. Come on, heave!"

Gimlet, once sober, turned out to be one of those thin men with a lot of nervous energy. He was constantly in motion in the days when the catapult was being built, always there with recommendations and exhortations. Most of the patrons of the bar took sick days to come and work in secret in the abandoned warehouse yard behind its high fence just a few yards away from the tower. Because they worked in the daylight hours, the Dark Lady's guards didn't pay any attention to the sound of construction from behind the fence, or bothered to check the lumber deliveries coming in from Malt's lumber yard.

At last the bulky machine was done. It only took a few swings from sledgehammers and the fence separating the yard from the street was in pieces on the ground. With the fence out of the way, the yard had a clear line of sight to the Dark Lady's tower

Grappa, the burly barkeep, leaned on his sledgehammer and watched his boys, along with the others, pulling on the ropes that drew the launching pin into place.

"You should be proud of them," Jing said, coming alongside the barkeep.

Grappa nodded. "I always have been."

With a last collective groan, the pin dropped into place, and Malt and his pudgy cousin Slivovitz pushed the millstone onto the padded platform. The wood shrieked in protest, but held strong.

Gimlet ran up to Jing and Grappa.

"It's ready to go. Where do you want it?"

Jing stared at the tower rising above the castle roof. They were facing the back side of it, but the windows were still clearly visible. He pointed to one mid-tower.

"There. Aim the stone right there."

Gimlet grinned. "You've got it!" He ran over to the catapult and had the men turn it slightly on big wooden wheels, then shooed everyone away and cut the cord holding the launching pin back.

The heavy millstone sailed through the air and connected, shaking the tower and sending stone and water everywhere.

Moisture poured out of the gaping hole left in the millstone's wake, and with it came the Mermen, faces contorted with rage as they landed on the street below, tails flopping helplessly.

"Thanks, Gimlet," yelled Jing as he ran forward, leaping from the catapult, across the street to the palace wall, then over it to land on the tiled roof. It only took a moment for him to leap off it and grab the sill of the lowest window then jump from sill to sill, ever higher until he reached the hole.

Glancing back over his shoulder, Jing saw the Mermen being dispatched by the determined workmen, who were now using their sledgehammers as weapons. At that moment, Kir arrived, landing on Jing's shoulder with a flourish.

"I've scoped out the tower, and I'd say we've got four more stories to go after this one," he said proudly.

"Then let's go," Jing grinned and disappeared into the hole.

They fought their way past monsters out of horrific nightmares. There were mudmen, vaguely man-shaped piles of oozing muck that tried to suffocate them. There were hydras, many headed snakes with lightning quick strikes, sphinxes who used their massive leonine hindquarters to propel them through the air, and griffins, those winged lions with eagle's head, and more importantly, sharp eagle's beaks for rending. In the end though, none could stand against a Kir royale.

Jing paused in a crouch at the base of a stone staircase, alert for the next wave of attack, but none came. The two griffins guarding the base of the staircase were piles of dust. Kir disengaged from Jing's arm and fluttered to the floor. Jing immediately flicked his wrist and extended his blade, ready in case of ambush ahead.

"Whew! I'm bushed. Any more monsters?" the bird asked, staring around suspiciously.

Straightening, Jing stood still and listened. "No. And I don't hear any more coming either."

The boy and the bird stared up the staircase. Jing's expression was still, and only the slight heaving of his shoulders as he breathed showed the stress he'd put his body through as they'd fought their way up four stories.

"Let's go," he said, and ran lightly up the steps, his coat tails swirling behind him.

Kir shot up into the air. "You said it, Jing. Let's go bag ourselves a babe! Gee, I hope it turns out to be the young one and not the old one!"

o-o-o

The staircase opened up into a broad, circular room. As Jing stepped out onto the floor, Kir on his shoulder, he saw that it was composed of a vast, solid piece of black marble. The walls of the room were broken by tall rectangular windows with long curtains that billowed in the winds that danced through the room. One section of wall, about six feet across, had no windows. Instead a stepped platform had been built against it to house a throne. On the throne sat a woman in a black dress. Her veil was thrown back and covered most of her hair, which hung loose down her back. The dress plunged into a low 'V' at the neck, and a single black diamond pendant lay between her breasts. Her only other jewelry were two simple silver pins which attached her inky cloak to the shoulders of her dress.

She rose as Jing stepped out onto the marble floor and stopped.

"So this is how it ends," she said quietly, without any expression on her pale face or in her dark eyes. Lifting her skirt a few inches off the floor by bunching the material in her hand, she slowly began to descend the steps of the platform.

"It IS the young one," breathed Kir, taking in the unlined face and solid black hair of the woman coming towards them. Pushing out his chest, he raised his voice and called out to her.

"Why speak of endings, when we could have such a beautiful beginning?" the bird asked, staring frankly at her chest. "I think I'm in love!"

She dismissed his words with a glance and turned her gaze to Jing, dropping her skirt as she reached the floor and stopped.

"Who are you?" she asked tonelessly, as if it didn't matter to her one way or the other.

"I'm called Jing."

"The king of bandits?" This time there was a hint of curiosity in her voice.

"So you've heard of us? I'm Kir, the handsomer of our merry team, and…" Kir left off with a pout as Jing clenched his shoulder, signaling him to stop flirting.

"Some people call me that," he replied evenly, and stared back at her.

"So you've come to fulfill the prophecy, to take my life and Zenithria from me."

"I don't know about any prophecy."

The Dark Lady tilted her head slightly, consideringly, then moved it back to its original position and dullness clouded her eyes again. "It doesn't matter. You will fulfill your destiny as I have filled mine these many years. My time is finished. Order will be destroyed and chaos will reign again."

Her eyes dropped to the blade extending out from under Jing's sleeve. She took a step forward, moved her skirt out of the way, and sank to her knees on the floor, bowing her neck. "Come. I surrender. Your quest is successful. Take my head and the kingdom is yours."

"Nooo!"

The Dark Lady gasped in surprise as two screaming harpies shot in through the open windows and converged on Jing.

With no time to get together with Kir for a Kir Royale, Jing reacted instinctively, using his blade to slice. He got one through the chest laterally and gave the other a diagonal cut across the torso. To his surprise, they didn't dissolve into dust like the other monsters, but instead crashed to the floor writhing.

"What the…?" Kir squawked as he flew down from the ceiling where he'd retreated when the female bird creatures so unexpectedly attacked.

Jing stared over at the fallen monsters. Their faces and forms seemed to blur. Feathers melted away, clawed appendages turned into hands and feet, as wings faded.

"Jing! Watch out! The Dark Lady!" squawked Kir suddenly as he noticed that the woman had risen and come over to stand silently at Jing's shoulder.

She sighed, watching the transformation on the floor. "You have nothing to fear from me. The prophecy clearly states that 'He who reaches the last level of the tower will destroy the old rule and lead all Zenithria'. You have defeated all the creatures I set to guard the tower. I'm finished. I've already surrendered."

Half turning, Jing wrenched his gaze off the pitiful forms at his feet and stared evenly at the woman standing next to him. "You said that before they attacked, so forgive me if I don't believe you."

A hand tugged at his trouser cuff and despite himself, the bandit jumped back, startled. The ex-harpy pulled herself forward, smearing the widening pool of blood beneath her, and reached again for Jing's ankle with fully human hands. "Please," she whispered hoarsely, "Please don't kill my lady."

"Please," echoed the other one faintly, unable to so much as raise her head from the ground. She shuddered, and lay still.

Grimacing, Jing noticed that the dead one's body, though now fully human, was also in far worse shape than could be explained by the single cut across its chest. Parts of the flesh were eaten away, and the edges of the remains were burnt and discolored.

"Please…don't…she helped us…" the woman's body at his feet gasped out her last words, then the lower half of her body melted away into ashes.

The Dark Lady knelt, reached out a hand and closed the woman's eyes, drawing the eyelids down gently over eyes stuck rigid in death's stare.

"I did not ask them to attack you," she told Jing softly, drawing her hand back to her side. She pulled her gaze off the corpse and looked at him. "I told both of them to fly away to safety when I heard you defeat the last of my guardians. They disobeyed my orders. Already the chaos begins." A look of infinite sadness crossed her face as she shifted to confront Jing. "My time is over. You must end this, now."

Kir walked over to the far harpy, his tread exaggeratedly casual, as he always did when something touched him and he didn't want to admit it.

"So what was she?" he asked truculently. "I thought she was a bird! A butt-ugly, scary bird, but a bird just the same. Now she looks like a human."

The Dark Lady gazed over at the dead body Kir was inspecting, and answered him. "She was a human once. They both were. During the war, Absinthe and I came upon a farmstead that had been attacked by mercenaries hired by the Absolut family. Two sisters lived there. They'd been…used and killed by the mercenaries, who'd set the farm on fire in an attempt to hide their crime." She swallowed, the memory of that horror plain in her eyes. "Usually I use dirt as material for creating my creatures, but that time I experimented and used ashes from their bodies to create harpies. I sent them after the mercenaries who'd harmed them. I didn't really expect to see them again after that. Out of all my monsters, these are the only two who obeyed me because they wished to. They alone had a degree of free will. They've served me faithfully, until now."

She rose to her feet and turned her back on the corpses. "I am ready. Do it."

Jing retracted his blade so he could cross his arms and stare back at her. "If you really know who I am, Dark Lady, then you know I'm a thief, not a murderer."

Her brow furrowed slightly. "You act as if you have a choice. You don't. You must kill me if you want to take Zenithria. Otherwise I will go back to fulfilling my own destiny and restore order to my country and my people."

"Oh is THAT what you were doing?" Kir goaded. "Here I thought you were just making their lives miserable."

Jing ignored his partner and focused on the woman before him. "You say you want to restore order. How? By creating monsters? By terrorizing your people into obedience?"

The Dark Lady took an involuntary step back. "Rules are necessary," she said. "People are not safe unless there is law and order. Once rules are gone there is only anarchy. People get hurt, people die without laws to restrain criminal acts."

Shrugging, Jing conceded. "Maybe so, but life without a little chaos isn't worth living. Isn't that right, Kir?"

"Absolutely!" Kir nodded decisively.

Jing walked over to the nearest window, which opened out onto the tower's balcony. He stepped over the sill and gazed down below, waiting for the Dark Lady to join him before speaking. "Look at the people down there."

Obediently, she walked to the balcony's edge, laid her hand on the railing and looked down. People were dancing in the streets, kicking piles of dust, the remains of monsters, and pointing to the middle of the tower where the gaping hole stood open to the air. Grappa had set up an impromptu bar using extra lumber leftover from the catapult and was serving mugs of beer to the delirious populace.

She watched for a moment, then said, "They are celebrating chaos. They have killed my monsters. I commanded them not to resist anymore once I realized you would make it to the top of the tower. There are none left in the city to patrol it and keep the people safe."

"They aren't just celebrating victory," Jing corrected her gently. "They're celebrating life."

The Dark Lady turned her back on the scene below. "I don't understand. They had safe lives with me. I protected them."

Jing moved around and stood in front of her, forcing her to look in his face as he spoke.

"People need to be free to be happy. When did you ever give them the freedom to celebrate?"

Her composure slipped and for a moment she looked like a lost and confused child, then her brow smoothed out and her expression went still. "They will celebrate all the more when they hear of my death," she said.

"Oh, you're not going to die," the bandit king told her lightly.

She glared at him. "I must die if you are to fulfill the prophecy. Alive I will always strive to bring order and safety to Zenithria. I can create more creatures, creatures from your worst nightmares, and I will go on doing so." She caught her breath and drew herself back, aware that she'd been leaning forward and shouting at the boy. She calmed herself and continued gravely, with finality. "There is no way to stop me short of death."

Jing cocked his head consideringly. "Have you ever tried to create creatures from good dreams instead of nightmares?" he quipped.

Getting no response beyond a steady stare, he sighed. "You know, there is another option besides death."

"I told you, while I live I am sworn to bring order to Zenithria. I promised my great aunt that I would take the tower and defend our people against the Absolut family and the forces of chaos."

"Well, you can't defend Zenithria if you're not IN Zenithria."

"What do you mean?"

Stepping behind her, Jing put his hands on her shoulders and gently shoved her back into the throne room. "You're answer is coming right about…now."

With a roar of machinery, a motorcycle bumped its way up the last few stairs to the throne room and skidded to a stop right in front of them. The postal worker took his hands off the grips, reached into his bag and pulled out a letter, which he handed to Jing.

"Here you go, Jing. A thankyou note from the people of Time City."

The thief took it with a grin. "Thanks, Il Postino. By the way, I've got a package for you," he said, and gestured towards the Dark Lady.

Il Postino smiled back. "I figured as much." He looked over at the woman standing next to Jing. "Hop on."

The Dark Lady looked back and forth between them as if she couldn't figure out which of them was more insane. "I…I don't understand."

"There's quite a lot you don't understand." Jing smiled at her. "I'm sending you off with Il Postino to find out what its like to be down below, out of this tower and among the people. You've been cooped up in here for far too long."

"But I thought…"

"No buts!" Jing pointed a finger in mock chastisement. "You surrendered to me, remember? That means you have to do what I say, and I say you have to go with Il Postino. He could use the company."

The Dark Lady turned and looked inquiringly at the postman, sitting on his motorcycle gazing back neutrally, neither welcoming nor rejecting. She looked back at Jing, who simply kept grinning at her, then bowed her head in defeat and climbed on board behind Il Postino.

"But what about my people? How will you rule over them?"

Jing laughed. "Oh I don't intend to rule over them. They can rule over themselves. I'm a thief, not a king, remember?" Grinning widely, he held up his hand and showed her the black diamond pendant that moments before had been hanging around her neck.

"That's Jing for you," crowed Kir, flying in to land on his friend's shoulder.

The Dark Lady touched her neck, reaffirming that the necklace was indeed gone, then a look of worry crossed her face.

"But…" The rest of her sentence remained incomplete as Il Postino gunned the motorcycle.

"The people can rule themselves just fine," shouted Jing over the noise. "Have a little faith in them!" he called after her as the motorcycle roared across the throne room and down the staircase.

Grabbing Il Postino's waist in panic, she repeated his words softly.

"A little faith."

Closing her eyes, she concentrated.

In the mining camp, an old man in a hospital bed stared out the window in astonishment as two ogres on patrol outside disappeared in a puff of dust. From all throughout the camp cries of astonishment and joy began ringing out as the prisoners realized they were at long last free.

Up on the balcony, Jing looked out at the crowds dancing and cheering below.

"So Jing," Kir began, looking worriedly over the railing as Porter poured a beer over Claret's head, or was it Claret pouring the beer over his brother's head? "Do you think they'll be OK down there?"

Jing nodded. "I think they'll do just fine." His face widened in a grin as he saw Grappa shaking his head over his sons' antics as he grabbed a beer for himself. "But I think a lot of them will be having hangovers tomorrow."

END

A/N: There may be an epilogue – I have an idea for one, so if anyone is interested in what happens to the Dark Lady, let me know.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE: EPILOGUE

For the first several weeks she was silent, lost in an endless round of thought caused by Jing's words. She went through the motions of life mechanically, sleeping when Il Postino stopped to camp for the night, eating when he put food in front of her, speaking only when he spoke to her to ask if she was hungry, thirsty, or needed to rest.

So wrapped up was she in the misery and strangeness of not having to maintain the large number of creatures needed to run a kingdom, that she barely noticed where they went or who Il Postino delivered his letters to. It was an odd and lonely existence. She hadn't had much human contact at all since Cervasa had died, a victim of her stupid attempt to escape her destiny. Absinthe dismissed the mercenary army, including Cervasa's old comrades, right after they won the last battle, and encouraged her to rely on the monsters instead. She thought at first that it was because her great-aunt was afraid that more people would die because of her, because she'd tested fate once again, and once again an innocent victim paid the price. When her aunt was shot through the chest by a last Absolut family retainer who'd stayed behind hidden in the palace, waiting for his chance, Mirin knew that it was fate's way of warning her once again of her duty, and Mirin knew what she had to do to keep the people of Zenithria safe.

Since that time she hadn't so much as touched another human being in passing, yet now she spent most of each day holding onto the warm, solid, and oddly comforting form of the postman. At first she'd been vaguely worried that he'd try something. She'd seen first hand what happened to women captured in war. Her two harpies were proof of men's depravity, but the postman never touched her apart from helping her on and off the motorcycle.

Gradually she began to notice things about him. The way he smiled when he delivered letters to people, and the way they smiled back in response. His frequent acts of kindness when he'd offer advice, news, or direction along with the mail, just when it was most needed. It had an almost preternatural fortuitousness about it. She didn't know how he managed to be in the right place at the right time to give people that little boost when it would do them the most good, but she sensed in him a difference that set him apart from others, just as her gift had done. Only Cervasa had ever seen past the gift and looked at her. With his death she gave up on human understanding and companionship and threw herself into her duty with a singlemindedness that pleased her great-aunt, but brought her little happiness. Being numb was better than the wrenching agony she'd felt when she'd seen Cervasa's bloody corpse on the floor. Better to wrap herself in work than feel.

Cervasa was the one who'd seek her out and talk to her whenever he had the chance. He'd made her laugh, given her hope, and his death broke her heart.

Il Postino was nothing like Cervasa. He was polite, helpful, and left her alone with her thoughts, never intruding or offering advice. It was just as well, she was having enough trouble processing the advice Jing gave her.

"Have a little faith," he'd said, but how? What did he mean by 'faith'? It was something she pondered.

She was still pondering it one afternoon when Il Postino stopped for a picnic lunch. He laid his red tartan blanket under a tree in a meadow by the side of the road, and handed her an apple, cheese, and some bread. She sat quietly and ate it, watching his face as he stared out across the meadow with a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were seeing something she couldn't.

"What are you looking at?"

If he was surprised by the first unsolicited words she'd ever made to him, he gave no indication of it. He simply kept gazing out across the meadow with a calm expression as he answered.

"The horizon, because there's always something new beyond it."

She sighed and pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on her kneecaps. She'd washed her black dress at the inn the night before and the fabric still smelled of the lavender soap she'd used on it. He had his horizons to look forward to, but what did she have?

Nothing.

The King of Bandits had swiped the only jewelry she owned, the first flawless black diamond to come out of the mines after she'd taken over Zenithria. She had no money, no friends, and she was completely dependent on a man she knew nothing about. He was simultaneously her jailor and her savior, for if she'd stayed in Zenithria she would have died, if not by Jing's hand then by the people whom she'd come to realize hated her. Her purpose in life was gone, and now she couldn't help but question that purpose, that destiny. Her attempts to protect her people only made them unhappy. It took a young thief to make her realize that.

"There is nothing beyond the horizon for me," she said softly.

"Then perhaps you're not looking hard enough."

Mirin glanced up sharply. It was the closest thing to a criticism that she'd had from him, and it stung. With Jing she'd been resigned, then uncomprehending as he'd destroyed her careful little world, her belief in the way things were. Thieves took things, destroyed things, it was in a sense their job. It hadn't been personal. It hadn't hurt.

Il Postino was unfailingly kind to the people he met. She'd grown used to that kindness, used to the way he seemed to genuinely care about the concerns of others. Evidently his caring was reserved for them and not for her. She bit her lip and was silent, turning her head away to rest her cheekbone flat against her knees and wondering as she did why she was so bothered by the postman's words. He never looked at her unless he had to. Cervasa, on the other hand, had stared at her every chance he got, as if memorizing her features, drinking her in with his eyes. His stares unnerved her when they first met.

She closed her eyes. She'd been thinking about Cervasa a lot lately. He was one of an unending number of regrets and second guesses. If she hadn't fallen in love with him, would he still be alive today?

A hand, browned by the sun, was extended in front of her face when she opened her eyes again. She lifted her face to see the owner of the hand standing patiently in front of her, waiting.

"Come," he said, and more out of shock than anything else, she took his hand and allowed him to draw her to her feet. He slipped one arm around her back, positioning her, and pointed outward with the other.

"There, do you see that dot at the base of the mountain?"

Squinting, she looked and saw a smudge, far down the road, black against the forested crags rising above it.

"Yes."

"That's where we're headed. There's an innkeeper there with gout. His wife passed away and he is raising two boys on his own. He'll tell you stories about the trouble they get into that will have you smiling for months afterwards. Over the mountains, there's a long valley with farm villages. They're good people, strong, uncomplaining. We'll get to the end of the valley by nightfall and stay with a farmer and his wife. She makes apricot preserves with a flavor that explodes in your mouth. They adopted a little girl three years ago since Chalice is barren and can't have children of her own. After that we'll stay in a small town with an old married couple whose son died in the last war. We'll have to share a room, because they keep their son's room as a shrine to him. There's a trundle bed so we'll be on separate mattresses. They've had it rough, losing their only child, but they've got each other and they never forget that. They're the happiest couple I know."

She'd stiffened when he mentioned sharing a room, then relaxed when he talked about the trundle bed. His hand rested lightly, without menace, on her back. Her brow furrowed, not in fear, but in curiosity.

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"Because this is your horizon too."

She moved her head, her check accidentally brushing against his chin as she looked up at him. He looked back at her, gazing steadily, deeply, into her eyes with an expression she didn't recognize. She blinked and looked down.

"Yes, I suppose it is," she agreed dully. "I'm your prisoner. I'm bound to go wherever you go."

A warm, insistent finger touched her underneath her chin and drew her face back up to his.

"Is that what you think? That Jing gave you to me to be my prisoner?"

His eyes were searching now, as she nodded hesitantly.

"You misjudge Jing, and you misjudge me," he told her gravely.

He was disappointed in her, and for some reason that mattered. It mattered more than anything else had mattered to her for a long time.

Holding her gaze, he continued.

"Jing is a lot more perceptive than people realize. In the past fifteen years I've never delivered one letter to the tower of Zenithria. In all the times I've visited I've never seen one person enter that tower to visit you. I think it must have been a very lonely place. The road is a lonely place too. I look into people's lives. I see them with their families, I help them with their problems if I can, but I'm never truly a part of their lives. I don't belong to any of them. I think maybe Jing decided that we both needed someone to belong to."

Mirin felt herself beginning to tremble. On the motorcycle she'd always held onto Il Postino out of necessity, to keep from falling off. In that position she couldn't see his face, but now he was holding onto her, and looking at her in a way that set her heart to pounding.

Someone to belong to? She'd belonged to her duty for so long, and after Cervasa died she never thought again about belonging to anyone else. The enormity of it left her speechless.

Il Postino dropped his finger from her chin and stepped away from her. Her back felt cold without his arm around it. He lifted his face towards the horizon again and spoke.

"Or maybe he merely wanted you to see the world and meet other people you never would have met on your own locked away in that tower, and he figured I was the best way to get you to do that."

He kept staring down the road, giving her an out, a second option, a chance to go back to the way things were between them before. She could get back on the motorcycle and go back to being a silent spectator. She could go back to speaking only when spoken to, to watching the people Il Postino interacted with without any context or understanding of their lives or situations. He'd never spoken of the people on his postal route until now, and she realized it was because she'd never asked. Since Jing handed her over to Il Postino she hadn't asked anything of him, not once.

If she took his implied suggestion, and went back to the way things were, she'd continue learning about people through watching Il Postino, but it would be a dry lesson. She'd always be on the outside looking in, like an orphan looking through a window at a family dinner. And what about Il Postino? He'd had no one to share his thoughts with, until now.

Mirin forced her feet to move. She took a step forward, then another until she was at his side. Reaching down, she felt for his hand and grasped it, softly twining her fingertips with his.

There was a town at the foot of the mountains, one with a gouty innkeeper. They'd be there by nightfall. That's where they were headed. She thought of the way the postman's face softened and his eyes took on a wistful expression when he spoke of the elderly couple who'd withstood the storm of losing a child together, and her grip tightened.

"If I wanted to leave, would you let me go?" she asked.

He stiffened slightly. She could feel it through her hand, though he didn't show any change of expression on his face. She'd have to get used to that. His face was not an open book.

"Yes," he said at last. He continued to look out at the town down the road, but there was a tired stillness in him that hadn't been there before.

She felt it too. The thought of going on without him made the world seem dreary, wearisome, akin to her life alone in the tower.

"I don't want to leave. I want to stay with you."

Now that she knew that she wasn't a prisoner, that he'd never really seen her that way, the choice was an easy one. It was as if a weight lifted from her shoulders.

She laughed. "I want to stay with you," she said again, and meant it.

Suddenly, his eyes were laughing back at her and his fingers, strong and warm, curled back around her, returning her grip.

"Good," he said, and that was that.

THE END


End file.
